fishouttawater

New Blog

2009-10-06T17:41:00.002-04:00

OK, kids, I've started my new blog, the Los Angeles Chapter II to Fish-Outta-Water's Binghamton Chapter I. It's called Through A Fish Eye Lens. Not sure where it will take us, but please come along!

So long, Fish Outta Water!

2009-09-30T18:36:00.004-04:00

This will be my last blog entry, and it is, coincidentally, the 300th since I started this blog 3 1/2 years ago, in February 2006. The blog started as a way to A) relate my experiences living in upstate NY, mostly to my family and friends in Los Angeles/California, B) stay sane in the absence of having an actual life, with friends and family and sunshine and stuff, C) give me something to do while my husband worked on his PhD.

Since that first post, I've developed a bit of a following and it has been so much fun to see who the blog resonated with. I definitely never thought anyone in Binghamton would ever read it, and was surprised that people I saw every day read it, but never mentioned that fact to me- why so shy? It is so much fun to think of all the things I did, just so I'd be able to blog about them later.

I thought I'd end it with "Stuff I'll miss about living in Binghamton":

Chicken Parm
The 5 Minute Commute
Ethnic Festivals
New York City
Snow, since it "covers the ugly"
Turning leaves
Lawyers treating each other with civility
The fact that my "banker" came to my garage sale
Everyone reading the same local newspaper and knowing exactly what is in it, every day
The Binghamton Club
Our front porch
Knowing our neighbors
Wegmans

I'm sure there are lots more, but these come to mind. What would YOU miss?

I'm not finished blogging, of course. I started a new blog project today, which is of limited interest and to a different audience, but here you go. I will likely start up a new blog, the Los Angeles analog to this one, after The Yearbook Project peters out. I'll post a link when/if I do.

THANK YOU FOR READING!!!

BAAAAAAAAD Carpet

2009-07-22T16:11:00.002-04:00

Since we are moving to LA next week, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and also like I need to document things that we'll miss. One thing we will decidedly not miss, but that is document-worthy, is the most heinous carpet imaginable, that graces the 2nd floor of our otherwise-fairly-nice Binghamton rental.

This is obviously very embarrassing for me, to publicly post the disgusting state of our flooring, but it's not mine, right? I just had to suffer with it for 3 1/2 years. In fact, when we first rented the place, I approached the landlord and offered to split the cost of new carpet. Pretty generous for a short-term renter, right? She was having none of it. The old carpet was perfectly serviceable, she assured me.

Not only is it horrifically ugly to look at, it's even worn out, beaten down and not the cleanest. There are three flavors of awfulness to sample, variously in the master bedroom (yellow), the hallway (the brown marbleized stuff) and the two additional bedrooms (the dark blue/aqua/light blue stuff).

The yellow carpet, which I alternately refer to as "the rice-a-roni carpet" or "the surface of the sun" because it is blindingly bright yellow, is in our bedroom. When we first moved in, I was at a loss as to how to minimize its nastiness, so I painted the walls a light yellow. But I was only fooling myself to think that that would distract from the heinousity that was the carpet. Really, I think the surface-of-the-sun burned a hole into my retina so that I no longer saw it.

But maybe the best part is that, when we move out, the landlady's first order of business is not to have a housekeeper come in or have the place painted. No sirree, the day after we move out, she's having the carpets cleaned!

Tales from the Moving Sale

2009-07-19T13:07:00.002-04:00

Today is Sunday and we are taking the day off. Yesterday's Moving Sale was a smashing success. I would have been happy if all I got out of it was the experience; some good stories and something to blog about. We got that, 95% of our unwanted stuff was taken away by willing participants, and we made a wad of cash, to boot. Win/win/win/win! I am a convert to the whole notion. Here are some highlights:

The Early Birds
The ads (CraigsList, the newspaper, and an angelic friend/neighbor who made beautifully eye-catching signs and even got pink helium balloons to draw people in) indicated that we'd be starting at 8 am, as local custom prescribed. We got started hauling stuff outside a bit after 6 am and we expected "early birds" but I didn't really expect how aggressive they'd be, nor that we'd have a gaggle of them (all men, for some reason) lined up by 7:30 am. Some people would pull up and ask questions to assess our offerings: "You got any archery or hunting?" asked one man. "Any vintage Christmas?" asked another. "Jewelry?" "Buttons?" "Fragrances?" (that last one sort of grossed me out- who sells used perfume? or old perfume? more to the point, who buys it?)

Shoo! Bird, Shoo!
We tried to tell people politely, but firmly, that we were not open for business until 8 am. One lady came a bit after 7 am, was shooed off, and came back with some old-lady friends a few minutes later. Her unwanted return coincided with John and me trying to lug out a heavy piece of furniture and she and her buddies were totally in our way. My super-nice husband surprised with a stern, "Ladies, please, move aside!" The response? "Come on, mom, let's go." Hilarious. Game on.

Commerce
We had a friend of John's on-hand starting at 7 am and thank God we did because we needed the help. We must have had 20 people there by 8:30 am. At one point, baby strapped to me, I looked at my watch, convinced it was 10:30 am. Ugh. Only 9:05!

I didn't do much of the money-transacting, actually. It seemed like they sought out the men for this activity. Or maybe I wasn't making myself available. I have to admit, I got confused, and it probably showed, every time someone handed me money to take my unwanted stuff away. I realized that, although I'm in "sales" as a lawyer, people don't buy my services of their own volition. It's a necessity. So it just felt so odd for people to be excited about handing me cash for what I had to offer. A lawyer's lesson in capitalism, to be sure.

(Please note, in the above photo, the two men who appear to be racing each other up the steps to check out our "electronics section." I recognized the guy in the jeans shorts on the left: he is a neighbor from whom I acquired my most-prized garage sale haul: a stack of about 20 vintage Playboy Magazines!)

John's First "Art Show"
John's photography is quite good, and I had about 30 of his photos, mostly from our travels to Europe, that I had framed and up in my office at one point or another. They were in cheap frames, and it's easy to re-order the photos, so I decided to see if we could sell any of them at the sale, at the same time fulfilling John's long-standing goal of organizing a show of his work. A two-fer! We laid them out on the sloped, grassy front lawn and sold 2/3 of them ($9 each, 2 for $16, 3 for $20!) People loved them. Not the Early Birds, though. Interestingly, all the art photos sold to the afternoon crowd, the people not so on-a-mission that their radar was not up for the really good stuff, like this.

That's not totally true. We did sell one of John's artsy photos to a woman in the 8 am hour. It was a dramatic, black and white photo that I had not intended to even put out for sale. She had her pick of any of the 30 photos at that point, but she said she really liked this one because of the movie star in it. Guess what the photo was of? ME. Better yet, me in Berlin, standing in the The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. As I stood there, sweaty and draped in a baby, wearing maternity-capris from Target, I confessed that the "movie star" in the photo was me. Sensing I was queering the sale, I did not mention the "murdered Jews" part.

Moving the Product
The above photo was taken at the end of the day, after we consolidated all the tables and the porch. We were left with about 5% of what we started out with. I was shocked. I thought we'd have half of it left. Instead, people would practically have bought the paint off the house. Recession-busters, we are!

My favorite customer was the Mayor. He and his fiance apparently just moved in a block down our street. In addition to one of John's ski jackets and a stereo system (for his campaign headquarters, he said), he bought an air mattress. I don't know why I find this so funny, but I do. He also tried to pay with a check, which so confused me that I actually accepted it. Clearly he does not understand the "buy now, pay now" nature of these things. When he returned to pick up his substantial purchases, I gave him a hard enough time ("I'm good for it," he protested. I know, I don't care. I don't want another errand to have to do next week!) that he handed me 3 twenties. Thank you!

At the end of the day, the experience exceeded our wildest expectations. We moved 95% of our unwanted stuff, made tons of people happy with their found-treasures, and made a wad of cash (probably 4 times more money than either of us estimated, in fact), a happy bonus.

We'd do it again, but it would take years to accumulate that much stuff again. As I sit here typing this, someone just wrapped on our door. NO LATE BIRDS!!!

NO EARLY BIRDS!

2009-07-17T21:55:00.002-04:00

When I first moved here and did a lot of garage-saleing, we thought it was hysterical that the newspaper ads would often say "No Early Birds!" What, pray tell, was this rare breed? Well, we found out. First, a bit of background . . .

We live at 51 1/2 ____ Street. Our landlords live at 51 ___ Street. When I went to place the ad for the Moving Sale, the space was so narrow that the "1/2" really threw off the lines. It just looked sooo much better when it read "51 ___ Street." I called John, "Would it be terrible if I listed the address for the Moving Sale at 51?" His response, "You've got to be an idiot if you show up at our side-by-side two-family house and can't figure out where the sale is." OK, I thought, I'll do it. I ordered the ad with the landlord's address (technically). But still, it didn't feel right to put someone else's address in the newspaper, no matter how tiny the ad is. But John said it was OK, right?

The same night I ordered the ad, my friend came over to help me price stuff. She told me of her experience in having a garage sale nearby, on a prestigious street where people really get psyched about attending these things. She told me she had people banging on her door the day before the sale.

My eyes almost popped out of my head. It had never occurred to me that people would arrive outside of the prescribed Saturday, 8am-4pm hours! It was too late in the day to call the newspaper and get the ad corrected. I vowed to call first thing in the morning to Stop The Presses!

And thank God I did. Friday morning, as I went to the door to leave for work, I thought I heard a faint knocking. As I opened the door, I found a woman standing on my porch, looking sheepish. She smiled, "Are you the ones having a garage sale?" MOVING sale, lady. And you and I both know that it starts tomorrow at 8 am. NO EARLY BIRDS! I get it now.

I am told that, even though we are starting the sale at what I consider to be the crack of dawn on a Saturday (8 am), people are going to arrive at like 6 am to try and beat the cherry-picking masses. We have a friend coming over at 7 am, ostensibly to help with the babies, but we are thinking that his primary duty might be "greeter." Or, more accurately, "deflector." Someone to firmly tell all the early-birds, while John and I are hustling to get everything set out, that the party don't start 'till 8!

There will surely be good blog-fodder emanating from tomorrow's sale. Stay tuned . . .

The Beauty of the Garage Sale. No, MOVING Sale.

2009-07-17T21:36:00.003-04:00

Today was my last day of work and we are moving in only 10(!!) days. Yesterday, a PODS (a beautiful invention) showed up at our house. This week, we've been barreling toward our long-awaited Garage Sale. I've been mentally wrestling with the idea for, literally, years. Is it too tacky to put your crap out on the lawn for the neighbors to pick through? Well, yes, of course it is. But that's neither here nor there. It's all about framing it for yourself. Me? I like to think that my possessions are having a party in the sun. And maybe someone will pay me to take them out for a spin. And keep them. Win/win, right?

But the real genius of the garage, er, Moving Sale, is that it makes it OK for you to part with stuff that you wouldn't otherwise part with. It's like you're finding a good home for an old friend. We haven't actually talked about how much money we'd make until a couple days ago. If we made $200, I'd probably be happy, because that's just gravy. The beauty is that it gives you an end-game for cleaning your house, like when you have a party and it makes you fluff up the inside. Anyway, I'm pretty tired after this long week, and also out-of-practice with writing, so this isn't my best work. Just trust me on this one: the Moving Sale is a thing of beauty, for many reasons.

p.s. Not only is the POD a genius idea for moving (it shows up at your house, you pack it at your leisure, you lock it, then they take it away and it shows up at your new house in a week or so), but we are using it as a staging area for the garage, I mean Moving Sale. We don't actually have a garage.

Identicality

2009-06-28T17:05:00.002-04:00

One question we seem to get over and over is whether our boys are identical twins. We have varying answers to this seemingly straightforward question, depending on how much we like the asker. Just kidding. But the answer definitely does vary with the context. If you are reading this, you are getting "the long answer." The short answer is "yes."

First, here's some background on twins . . . fraternal twins are essentially siblings born on the same day. They are the result of two separate eggs that happen to be released at the same time, which are then fertilized by two separate sperm (sorry for the biology lesson, but it will get worse from here on out). Fraternal twins tend to run in families, since it is related to the tendency of the woman to drop multiple eggs. Fraternals are more common in certain races (blacks are more likely, Asians less likely to have twins), older women, and those who use IVF or other forms of assisted reproduction. As a result, fraternals used to occur in about 1 in every 90 births. In the past 20 years, that number has doubled to about 1 in every 40 births. If you live in L.A. or NYC, where affluent, older women are increasingly tending to undergo assisted reproduction, you might think that there was a sale at Penney's on (fraternal) twins.

By contrast, identical twins are a completely random phenomenon in which one egg is fertilized by one sperm and then the egg splits within a few days after fertilization. Therefore, identical twins are carbon copies of each other. Identical twinning is a spontaneous thing that occurs at a rate of about 1 out of every 300 births, the world over.

When we had our very first ultrasound, at which we were told there were two babies brewing in there, the doctor assessed the placental biology and told us we were likely having identical twins. This was because it looked like we had two amniotic sacs sharing a single placenta (again, sorry for the biology lesson). This is the biology in about 70% of identical twins. However, what looks like a single placenta can actually be two placentas "fused" into one. Therefore, a pathologist looks at the placenta post-partum.

All of this is very boring, I know, so I'll cut to my point: three doctors told us we had identical twins, but we dug a little deeper and determined that it's really only a "best guess." The only way to know, with certainty, that they are identical is to a DNA test, something that insurance doesn't pay for and most people never do.

I know if I asked my (doctor) dad about identicality, he would say, "Look at them." I don't know. You tell me- identical or not?

Spaghetti Eating Contest

2009-06-14T21:27:00.004-04:00

This weekend we went to Feast Days at Saint Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church in Endicott, NY. Around here, this is Big Stuff. The 2-day affair includes not only food and desserts and lots of live music, but also beer and gambling. This year, they added a first: 1st Annual Spaghetti Eating Contest. Two words: Pure Genius.

Contestants had to pre-register to participate. You know, to keep the riff-raff out. I mean, 1st prize was $300, so you want to get good quality contestants. Ultimately, twelve of them were deemed worthy. (And yes, that is a chick in the foreground of the 3rd photo posted.)

Contestants were presented with a big plastic bowl containing 6 pounds of spaghetti and sauce, and had 10 minutes to suck it down. I still don't understand why there was a ziploc baggie full of spaghetti in front of each contestant's bowl. Maybe it was just for decoration/atmosphere? I do understand the water bottles. Not pictured but referenced several times: the barf buckets positioned behind each contestant. Soooo awesome.

Guess what? It is really, really gross to watch a spaghetti eating contest. In order to get photos, I jammed myself into the crowd of sweaty, beer-fueled men who made up the inner circle of the audience. The "splash zone," if you will. I lasted there for exactly 3 minutes. Wow, I suck.

The last place contestant ate just over a pound of the slimy stuff. The first place contestant apparently consumed over 3 pounds. Of spaghetti. For $300. Oh, and don't forget the plaque.

Love your parents? or is it Stockholm Syndrome?

2009-06-13T20:48:00.002-04:00

Now that the boys are 10 weeks old, we are starting to get substantially more feedback from them. They seem to orient toward our voices and recognize our faces. We have even been getting smiles for the past couple of weeks. All very reinforcing after so many weeks of nothing but dirty diapers and closed eyes.

But I started to think . . . I would smile, too, if I thought it would ingratiate me to the person who was solely responsible for not only my day-to-day comforts, but my very survival. "Yeah, you better smile at me buddy, or no milk for you!"

Then I remembered a psychological condition in which you identify with your captors: Stockholm Syndrome. Made famous by Patty Hearst when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, and ended up joining forces with her abductors.

Apparently I'm not so far off-base, as Wikipedia explains the psychology of the condition as follows: "According to the psychoanalytic view of the syndrome, the tendency might well be the result of employing the strategy evolved by newborn babies to form an emotional attachment to the nearest powerful adult in order to maximize the probability that this adult will enable — at the very least — the survival of the child, if not also prove to be a good parental figure."

Note: People often ask us if they are aware of each other yet, and we don't think so. However, when I put them in the bassinet this morning, they ended up touching hands, as shown in the photo. It is amazing to think that we used to lie them down cross-wise in that same bassinet- now it's crowded even when we lie them down the long way!

Baby Clothes

2009-06-04T10:36:00.009-04:00

Why are baby clothes so ridiculous? When we were pregnant and did not know the gender of the babies, people expressed their frustration with trying to buy us clothing, because everything seems to be gender-specific. Sure, there are a few items available in rubber ducky print (I think we own all of them, and I love them), and alligators and giraffes seem to be gender neutral. Good luck finding one-color items, much less white ones, or things with clean, geometric prints.

Thank God we didn't have girls, since pink starts to make me nauseous and the very thought of cheap lace makes me itch. Besides, the girl stuff tends to say things like "Mommy's Diva" or "Gold Digga" or even to have built-in bling.

Instead, we own lots and lots of things that have other kinds of ridiculous things printed on them. Why does a onesie have to say something like "Snugglesaurus" on it (with obligatory cartoon dinosaur)? or "Squeeze Me" (trust me, you don't want to squeeze a baby. Not unless you have a burp-cloth handy, at the very least).

The boy stuff tends to fall into a few categories: sports (see photo of hysterical matching outfits given to us by our 70-something landlords, and do not overlook the built-in track shoes), transportation, and police/fire.

What are the messages we are sending our children? Girls need to be self-absorbed divas and boys need to enlist in the fire/life safety professions?

p.s. Gratuitous baby photo: They are 10 thousand times cuter in real life than in these grainy, two-dimensional pics I've been uploading. You will note that they are wearing plain old white onesies, of which we have an entire drawer, since we go through several for each baby every day!

Who needs a birth announcment, when you have nosey neighbors?

2009-05-30T08:59:00.004-04:00

Emerging from a post partum fog, 8 weeks out, some memories are starting to emerge as particularly funny. For example, the way some of my "public" came to find out that we had given birth.

Our next door neighbors/landlords are a couple in their 70s. They are very sweet and were quite excited about our pregnancy. When they noticed our car gone all day, one day in early April, they decided we were at the hospital (we were) and they called in (there are only 2 hospitals in town) to confirm that I was in labor/delivery. How the hospital is legally allowed to confirm that over the phone to a random caller, I do not know.

Once they figured out we were at the hospital, on April 1st, they were barely able to wait to come see us. And I do mean barely. Declan & Finn were born at 12:11 and 12:12 am on April 2nd. At 10:05 am that same day, I was groggy and still waking up in the hospital, when the nurse escorted our landlords in to my room. I know it was 10:05 am because visiting hours started at 10 am and they had to wait. Apparently they wanted to come see us at 7:30 am, when they woke up, but were barred.

When they walked in, I was certainly surprised to see them, but could not have been distracted from the fact that I had two healthy babies. I even had a joke for them: "I know, I know, we owe you the rent as of April 1st. But we're a little distracted, as you can see. You know we're good for it." They didn't even hear me, too busy cooing over the babies.

It gets even better, though. One day, a few weeks post partum, we were walking down the street and encountered one of our neighbors, who we know only from walking her dog. I know her first name and her dog's name, and that she's friendly and nice, but that's about it. She told us that she was so excited when her phone rang and the caller ID came up with that of our landlords. She told herself, "We have babies!" Apparently our landlords had started a phone tree to announce the birth, and Mimi was the neighborhood contact. Mimi told us that she then called "Susie, Mitzy, Meredith, Rick, . . . " Who are these people? I asked. Apparently, they are all the neighbors who we do not know, and who I cannot believe would be that interested in getting a phone call to announce the birth of our children.

Apparently our next door neighbor did not get the memo about the birth, because she came over to our front porch one day, a few weeks after the babies were born, to see if we had gotten a cat (or two). She heard the babies through the window, and they certainly make a feline cacophony sometimes. I guess my winter coats, coupled with the fact that I went to work and wore high heels up until the end, had fooled her.

Women=Interested in babies; Men=not so much

2009-05-23T17:04:00.004-04:00

Despite being mostly-housebound, blogging has not been on my radar lately. Also, I'm even more boring than usual, so there's not a bunch to write about. That said, the few times I do get out with the boys, I tend to hear the same things. The funny thing is that now I'm able to predict what people are going to say, depending on their gender. It goes like this:

Women:
"Do you have a baby in there?" (we use these cool, stealthy slings to carry them sometimes)
"How old are they?"
"Are they identical?"
"Do twins run in your family?"
"How is the breastfeeding going?"
"You look fabulous."
"What are their names?"
"Did you have a c-section?"
"Which hospital were you at?"
"Who was your doctor?"
"How much did they weigh?"
"What do they weigh now?"
"When are you going back to work?"
"Do you have family around to help?"
"Can you tell them apart?"
"How do you tell them apart?"
"They are beautiful."

Men:
"Wow. Uhm, congratulations(?)"

How to make your ride look REALLY stoopid

2009-05-23T16:55:00.002-04:00

I couldn't help but notice this faux bullet hole in a car the other day. Now, what kind of moron thinks it's cool to have a bullet hole in his SUV? The scary thing was that this was a relatively nice car.

I wanted to tell the driver that, if he wants a bullet-riddled car, he should just move to LA, since this happened to a friend of mine last year (yes, she was quite upset about it, especially as it happened right outside her condo).

Cruel jokes to play on new mothers

2009-04-28T09:15:00.000-04:00

If these photos look overwhelming to you, think of how they looked to me, a new mother of twins, sleep deprived after weeks of feeding every 3 hours (or at least trying to), when I ventured out to Target a couple days ago to buy some baby necessities. Adding to the fun, each and every item I had to buy was something I'd never before purchased, therefore requiring a lot of product comparisons and label-readings. For example, who knew that pacifiers came in "sizes"? Cruel, cruel, cruel.

Vietnamese-to-Nail-Speak

2009-04-28T08:10:00.002-04:00

The City of Binghamton's (population 45,000) racial composition is about 80% White, 17% Black, and a little bit "Other." Which is why I love the fact that, even with this tiny "other" population, I was still able to find a totally Vietnamese owned/operated nail salon (called "Diamond Nails," of course.)

I did make it to the nail salon yesterday, which went a long way toward making me feel more human, post-baby. The thing that strikes me about the Binghamton Vietnamese nail salon is that the people who work there speak waaaaaay better English than any salon I've ever been to. Not sure why this would be the case. Maybe it takes longer for the immigrants to trickle up to Binghamton from their original port-of-entry into the U.S? Sitting atop a stack of outdated "People" and "Marie Claire" magazines, this Vietnamese-English dictionary was a real find. I taught myself how to say, "Damn, I already ruined my toenail polish when I was putting on my flip flops- can you please, please fix it before I leave?" A life-saving sentence, to be sure.

Declan & Finn have arrived!

2009-04-11T11:34:00.000-04:00

Declan & Finn were born April 2nd at 12:10 am and 12:11 am, weighing in at 4 lbs, 8 oz and 5 lbs, 6 oz. Small (although typical for twins) and perfectly healthy. We have been on a quite a steep learning curve for the past week but there has been no shortage of entertainment. A few disjointed thoughts, since my sleep deprivation is kicking in at this point and I'm not very good at long-range holding on to thoughts.

First of all, it's tough to tell the boys apart. Most of the time, we end up calling them "This One" and "The Other One," which aren't exactly catchy nicknames. In a pinch, they are still wearing their plastic hospital wristbands, so we better figure it out soon because those things are really going to be digging into their arms by the time they get to high school. Finn's hair is a little lighter than Declan's, which is lucky since "Finn" means "fair" in Gaelic (Note: approximately 90% of Irish names mean "fair," similar to the way 90% of Norwegian names mean "warrior" or "bride of warrior.")

Finn is skinnier (4 lbs, 4 oz. as of yesterday) so he looks a bit like a baby chimpanzee, with big eyes and flat cheeks. Or maybe he looks like Benjamin Button? Sometimes I call him Old Man Finn.

They are good boys, overall, but still so tiny that they probably require a bit of extra attention at night when they are fussy. We learned some tricks to activate their "calming reflex," such as swaddling (to mimic the feeling of being in the womb), rocking, white noise, etc. One night when This One (or was The Other One?) was acting up, I heard John say, in all seriousness, "I'm going to swaddle you like you've never been swaddled before!"

We took them to the pediatrician for their 1-week appointment this week, and the doctor made 2 comments that cracked me up:

"Their penises are looking great!" (why, of course they are!)- they got circumcised and she was commenting on how they are healing; and

"They are going to be big boys- they have big hands!"
OK, their hands are like 1-square inch, not kidding. I had to laugh.

How I know I live in a very Catholic region

2009-03-26T18:17:00.003-04:00

In case there was any question, we live in a very Catholic part of the country. It's possible I just never noticed these things before, but I noticed they were selling something at the grocery store that I don't think I've seen before: a "fresh palm cross."

Terrible Catholic that I am, I had to do a little research to remember that the Sunday before Easter is Palm Sunday, so I guess these are to be used in connection with that. I think, though, that the fresh palm cross must be used in cultures that I haven't been around much. For example, wikipedia seems to imply that these crosses are more Eastern European, and not, say, Mexican, which would explain why I don't remember ever seeing them in L.A.

Note: in doing my research for this entry, I stumbled upon USC's motto, which is: "Palmam qui meruit ferat." This means in Latin, "Let him bear the palm who has deserved it." Apparently the palm branch is a symbol of triumph. Good to know!

Inappropriate stuff people have said to me while I've been pregnant

2009-03-26T14:45:00.003-04:00

Now that I'm on full-time bed rest and about a week away from my April 4th due date, I thought I'd take a few minutes to reflect back on some of the . . . interesting things people have said to me in the past six months or so.

"My son kicked so hard when I was pregnant, he broke my rib." I have spent months worried about this, of course.

Random woman in line at the check-out of the cafeteria in my office, upon seeing I was pregnant. "My first baby lived for 2 days. Then she died. Heart problem." Thanks for planting that seed, random lady I've never seen before . . .

At dinner with my 3 best girlfriends here, who - as though I were not present at the dinner table- were debating whether I'd gained enough weight at about 5 months along. Two thought I had not, but the third added, "She's totally gained weight. You can see it in her boobs and her face and her butt. Stand up, Anne, and turn around." WHAT? Good thing I love those girls . . .

Very nice lawyer in my office, who certainly meant well, but described labor as, "The pain isn't that bad. You know, it's not like getting a stick in the eye." Note to self: labor is not as horrible as having a stick jabbed into my eyeball. Good to know. Encouraging, even.

[As I walked into a historical society board meeting, I was greeted by a nearing-60-year-old man, with no children] "Hello, FATSO!" He apparently lived with his mother for most of his life, and married for the first time just a few years ago. Shocker.

P.M.P. Deli

2009-03-17T20:44:00.006-04:00

For the past three years on St. Patrick's Day, we've been fortunate enough to be in Europe. You know how we always know it's St. Patrick's Day, even though we barely know what day of the week it is? Because there is always, always, always a parade. OK, maybe not always a parade. Sometimes just a bunch of drunk people wearing silly green clothing, hanging out of a bar. London, Rome, Paris- the whole world is stupid on St. Patrick's Day, it seems.

So this year, with little ones due in just 2 1/2 weeks, John was a little glum about not being in Europe this year, nor for the foreseeable future. So we decided to celebrate St. Pat's day with a virtual Europe trip: we'd find the best euro-deli in the area, get some exotic food and drinks we'd only eat abroad, sit on the front porch (now that the weather is getting downright lovely), look at our Europe photos and re-live the good ol' days.

Binghamton is full of (European) ethnic pride, as evidenced by all the summer festivals, and it actually has a lot of delis. But P.M.P. Deli is consistently mentioned as a favorite. When we pulled up outside, I could see why: who doesn't love a mural of a cornucopia of . . . meat products? That's a horn o'plenty you can really sink your teeth into. Clearly, we were in the right place.

Inside did not disappoint, either. The place was full of meats, cheeses, beers, and sweets from every country. And I mean every country. P.M.P. (Pimp?) Deli does not discriminate. Turns out the owner is Italian, and his wife was Polish, so they pretty much specialize in foods from the country of . . . Europea. Awesome- we can relive our time in London, Paris, Berlin, Ireland, Budapest, Italy . . . all in one-stop.

The result was great- a smorgasbord of treats from around the world. We just closed our eyes and it was like it was . . . St. Patrick's Day!

Children's Books

2009-03-10T20:13:00.000-04:00

Just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Wegmans Twins

2009-03-08T19:25:00.003-04:00

We are expecting in less than 4 weeks, and I gotta admit, identical twins freak me out a bit. While I went to high school with several pairs of perfectly normal, nice identicals, living in Binghamton has somehow spooked me on them, and I think I know why . . .

There is a pair of ethereal identical twins who seem to inhabit Wegmans like the mythological unicorn. We had a sighting this evening, and I was able to give chase and capture these beasts for blog purposes, as I had been hoping for months!

First, a bit of background about our beloved Wegmans: Wegmans is the mother of all grocery stores in the area. Not only is it huge and clean and open 24 hours, it has everything one's stomach could possibly want (except pomegranates, out of season, but that's another story). It is so vastly superior to the other stores in the area that pretty much anyone who has a car (and therefore does not rely on public transportation or walking) goes there. As a result, about 99% of people I encounter on a regular basis shops there. Wegmans is a shared experience around here, much like driving in snow.

A couple of years ago, John said that some of his classmates had been talking and had referenced "the Wegmans Twins." Huh? What was he talking about. "You know, those identical twins who are always at Wegmans." I laughed. Surely there couldn't be two nameless young women who had gained widespread recognition simply from going to the grocery store! Oh yes, my friends, they had. Here's why . . .

The Wegmans Twins probably go there every day, and they are never apart. They walk in, briskly, never getting a cart or even a basket. They pick up some small amount of food (see photo), from which department I know not. There is no conversation between them. There doesn't need to be.

The best part? They are dressed exactly the same, 100% of the time. Keep in mind, these women are probably 30 years old, possibly older. Not only do they always dress exactly alike, they are always wearing some form of modified break-dancing outfit (again, see photo, especially black tracksuit pants). It always looks like they got dressed circa 1989, permed hair, scrunchy and all.

So I'm on a bit of a mission to find out what their deal is. Turns out, they grew up locally and work - yes, of course they work in the same place- at Pets Mart, doing dog grooming. That's about all I know, though. I've got my buddies in the Wegmans fish department working on getting some inside intel, gleaned from the employee lounge, but so far . . . nothing. Stay tuned.

Why I'm glad we aren't using the Catholic hospital

2009-02-16T16:28:00.003-05:00

Among the reasons we are glad we aren't using the local Catholic hospital is that, well, it just freaks me out. We are going there for our childbirth education classes, so we end up getting lost in the halls each week (why are all hospitals so impossible to navigate?)

The best part is that we know we are in the correct (clinical, white, seemingly endless) hallway when we see . . . Jesus at the end.

Yup, that is Jesus at the end of that photo, arms outstretched, beckoning us to walk toward him, for the entire length of that freaking windowless, door-less, artless, soulless hallway. I feel like I'm arriving at the Pearly Gates or something. It's just creepy.

New York State Halls of Fame

2009-02-16T10:56:00.003-05:00

In exploring New York- all the bits and pieces and crevices, as I do- it seems I've run across a disproportionate number of Halls of Fame. Not just the famous Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, but the Soccer and Boxing and Dance Halls of Fame? I'd thought maybe it was "just me" until someone sent me a list of all such institutions in New York (thanks, Lisa!) Here you go:

BUFFALO MUSIC HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM

FIDDLERS HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM

GREATER BUFFALO SPORTS HALL OF FAME

HALL OF FAME FOR GREAT AMERICANS

HARNESS RACING MUSEUM & HALL OF FAME

INTERNATIONAL BOXING HALL OF FAME

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S SPORTS HALL OF FAME

LONG ISLAND MUSIC HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL ABOLITION HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM

NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM

NATIONAL DISTANCE RUNNING HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL JEWISH SPORTS HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DANCE & HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF RACING & HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL PURPLE HEART HALL OF HONOR

NATIONAL SOCCER HALL OF FAME & MUSEUM

NATIONAL TRACK & FIELD HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL TOY HALL OF FAME

NATIONAL WOMEN'S HALL OF FAME

NEW YORK STATE COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME

NEW YORK STATE STOCK CAR ASSOCIATION HALL OF FAME

PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING HALL OF FAME

ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME ANNEX

SARATOGA HARNESS HALL OF FAME

WESTERN NEW YORK WOMEN'S HALL OF FAME

Child Birth 101

2009-02-08T17:29:00.003-05:00

Instead of preaching abstinence, high schools should just make students attend the "Childbirth Education Series" we started attending this week at the local hospital. We've only attended 1 of the 4 sessions so far, but they are priceless. Let's begin . . .

The group: I was the oldest pregnant lady in the room (shocker, I know). There were 8 couples and almost all of them were married, which was a shocker. But I supposed this is a self-selecting group because it costs money and takes time.

We had to bring 2 pillows with us. I did not think this was going to be the source of entertainment, except that this is Binghamton, so of course one of the couples (a colorful couple at that: Him = in his 40s, weighed about 110 pounds, horrible teeth, absolutely covered in tattoos, works as a radiology technician at the hospital; Her = in her early 20s, very simple/sweet young thing, but had a look about her that was straight out of Deliverance) had . . . interesting cases. You guessed it! They were my favorite: hunting themed!

The class was actually very informative. The first hour was like 5th grade sex ed (with tons of anatomy and processes explained) except that this time we had to pay attention because all that completely gross stuff (mucous plug, anyone?) was actually happening to us.

The best part, by far, however, was the props. Below is a photo of what is supposed to represent a darling baby, resting comfortably inside an amniotic sac. Instead, however, it is the stuff of nightmares. Not only is the baby just creepy looking (please, no one give us any dolls, they are always creepy looking!), but it also had stigmata on its hands and feet. OK, not real stigmata, but there were metal snaps in those places and it did look odd. The best was the snap on the belly button, though, making the baby look like it was going to come out of the womb looking like Britney Spears.

And that plush, padded, maroon "seat" the baby is resting on? That would be . . . the placenta. It was even sewn such that it had ridges and stuff and looked a little like a brain. GROSS.

Not as graphic but equally hilarious was this gem of a prop. Think you are looking at a rasta cap? No, my friends, that would be a custom, hand-knit . . . uterus. Only, to me, it looked more like a uterus cozy. Seriously, why are we using a knitted (striped, no less!) representation? And who made this thing? And how did they go about choosing the colors? Questions abound.

The best part, though, was the zipper. At the break, I asked the instructor what the zipper was for. "That's to represent a Cesarean section, of course!" Silly me.

Fish-outta-water's Greatest Hits (2008)

2009-02-01T20:51:00.002-05:00

It's time. In fact, I'm overdue with Fish-outta-water's Greatest Hits of 2008. Here you go:

10. The Lumberjack Festival
9. Pa's Woodshed = Papa Woody's?
8. Hobology 101
7. Mr. Chair
6. The Superfly Hassidim of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn
5. The 5 Phases of Facebook: A Love Story, and its companion piece, Do Facebook "status updates" count as "reading"?
4. Mr. Power Mullet
3. The Guy
2. What Would Jesus Hunt? and . . .
1. Andouillette AAAA: "not a party pleaser"!!

Towns in Upstate New York seem to have only 10 street names

2009-02-01T19:34:00.002-05:00

I am extra-boring, and not feeling so bloggy, lately. I'm chalking this up to the fact that it is REALLY cold out and we are pretty much in hibernation-mode. No crazy festivals to attend and write about.

That said, we just came back from a little drive to a nearby town today, and every time we venture out of our own little Binghamton-bubble, I'm struck by the fact that each city (actually, we are usually technically talking about a "village") seems to have the same 10 street names prominently represented in their "downtown"/historic areas. They would be:

1. Court Street (guess where this one is located?)
2. State Street (usually near the city hall/courthouse area, too)
3. Front Street (always runs along the river, and every village here seems to have a river - or a canal- somewhere running through it)
4. Water Street (also near the river, usually near the site of an old Erie Canal-era canal, but there are inexplicably not many "Canal Street"s)
5. Clinton Street - DeWitt Clinton was a Senator and Governor of New York and is credited with building the Erie Canal in the early 19th century- a public work project that to this day is unrivaled in its significance to the growth of the country (Oh my god I sound like a 5th grader from NY, reading my book report, with that sentence!)
6. DeWitt Street - Gov. Clinton's first name was DeWitt, which is apparently where this street name comes from. It is an unusual name, so I do (because I'm obsessed with names) note that DeWitt is his mother's maiden name, a popular naming convention right now!
7. Liberty - guess they are just patriotic around here?
8. Broome - apparently after John Broome, a NY merchant and statesman. Boring, but we live in Broome County and there is a Broome Street in Manhattan, too, so he must have been important at some point, right?
9. ??? Huh, not sure of what the last 2 would be. If anyone has any ideas, please post them in a "comment" below- I know I'm forgetting some important common ones!
10. ???

Southern Tier Signage: the gift that keeps on giving

2009-02-01T19:30:00.001-05:00

I try not to blog about it every time I see a really awful sign, but this one was just too good. The business is called "Just in Time Auto" because the owner's name is Justin. I know this because he is in his own commercials, which seem to play non-stop on TV.

So you'd think he'd be a little savvier about his signage, right? So what is that orphaned comma doing, hanging out there after "time," but all by its lonesome, on the last line? And where did the capitalization go? Come on, Justin, get with the game!

More on Names: Greatest Hits from Broome County Hospitals

2009-01-23T20:28:00.015-05:00

Sorry, folks, I'm stuck here. Cannot stop thinking about names, so thought I'd share some fun with you. I discovered that all the local hospitals (OK, so there are only 2 of them) actually publish, and even archive, birth announcements. I have looked through zillions and zillions of them from years past, all the while developing a mental "DO NOT NAME" list.

These birth announcements, of course, become a treasure trove of actual name data. Not stuff you heard a rumor about- these are REAL names. I have done the favor of culling through them and finding the greatest hits. I have excluded ethnic names, since every culture has its own names that are appropriate for it. Below are names that are just . . . sweet. For various reasons. Have fun:

Aidan and friends
I knew that what had started as a nice Irish boy's name- Aidan- had spawned an unbelievable amount of offspring. I just wasn't quite prepared for A) people's, uhm, creativity(?) with the name or B) the huge percentage of names - both for boys and girls- represented by these. Let's visit with Aidan and some of his friends, shall we?

A: Aaiden Amari Andrew (guaranteed to be "first in his class" . . . at least, alphabetically that is!), Aadyn, Ayden, Aden, Adin, Adon, Aiden
B: Braden, Braedon, Braeden, Brayden, Breydon, Breyden
C: Caeden, Caiden, Cayden
D: Drayden
G: Grayden
H: Hayden, Haidyn, Haydn
J: Jaden, Jaedyn, Jaiden, Jaidan, Jaedan, Jayden, Jaydin, Jaidyn, Ja'Dyn, Jaydrien
K: Kadin (Mace), Kadan (Uriah), Kadin, Kaiden, Kaden
P: Payton, Peyton, Payden
R: Raydin

Where dad got involved in the naming process
Jack Nicholas
Nolan Ryan
Jonathan Zeus
Maverick
Caleb Espn (yes! the Southern Tier has its very own ESPN child!)
Ace
Blaze (and there are three little fires running around this county!)

When you can't decide, hyphenate! Does each parent have a faaaabulous name and they can't compromise? Why use adult negotiating skills to narrow the field and arrive at a normal name, when the hyphen is your friend!!
Belinda-Verginya Rose
Etana Marisa-Ann
Malayah Dawn-Kathleen
Zaniyah Amoy-Mary
Jeramyah Nasir-Marceillo
Kaylee-Lynn Princess-Marie
Destini Jaylee-Cheri
D'Angelo-Elijah
Zezra-Anne Sue
Allayah Mahkenzi-Beyonce
Jayden Jazspher-Jousalynn
Lyrik Violet-Leilani

Names I had (past tense) thought were reasonably cool until reading this list
Wyatt
Sage
Cadence (which, it was clear, had crossed over into "unacceptable" when I noticed all the variant spellings: Kadence, Kaydence, Kadience, Kaidence, Caedynce, Caydence)

Names that paint a portrait
Savannah Skye, Jade Sky, Autumn Sky, (and the bummer) Shadow Skies
Serenity Midnight
Sincerity Storm (sounds like the flurry of words that results when a guy is trying to apologize to his girlfriend for cheating on her or something)
Dakota Stream
Autumn Rayne
Ariel Sage (something you tie to your car antenna for good luck?)
Violet Olive (guhROSS! Sounds like something you find in the back of the fridge in a frat house bar)

Twins
David & Gereudale (huh?)
Tanner and Cooper (not bad names, just really great tradesman names: a leather worker and a barrel maker!)
Mason & Sawyer (same as above, but this time it's a bricklayer and a saw-man)

Confused
Haveen Helwa (Heaven & Hell?)
Shamus Angelo (they are going for the phonetic of "Seamus" but it looks like "Shame Us," which is perhaps offset by the "Angel" reference in the second part?)
Lady Lian (Lady Lying? Lady Lion? it's all bad)

"I'd like to buy a vowel, please?"
Hunter Mckhi
Zoe Snn
Skylr
Daoodtjj

Curve Balls
Neveah (yes, it's "heaven" spelled backward and it has become so popular in very recent years that it was the fourth most common name for girls in New Mexico in 2007. Don't ask . . . )
Justice
Liberty
Precious (really? and no middle name)
Zavier Zidane
Michelangelo (No middle name, which seems acceptable since they maximized the first name. At least they spelled it correctly.)
Q-maury
Jah-Ken Stefon
Phallon Maire (the first name sounds like "phallus" to me, and the second . . . a horse?)
Jecdae
Jaeliegh Hope (As in, "I hope she stays out of jail"?)
Miley Euphrades (with such a fluffy first name - as in Miley Cyrus- who would have expected the oppressively heavy middle name? the only expected part is that . . . it's spelled wrong.)
Nastmixxa (that is a great hip-hop/DJ name!)
Da'Shine La'Fresh

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams . . .
Kysheem Gucci (the only "Gucci" within 150 miles of here is the knockoff purses that people bring home from NYC)
Chanel Diamond
Lexus

Sorry, what was that name again?
Zicciah Clinton
Elioenai
Jazayvion
Ke'aylah Lizandre Rosa
Jy-lijah Tito (mom is named Cassiopeia, so this one seems to be keeping with tradition, in a way)
Hosamulhaq (try googling that one!)

When in doubt, just misspell it. That's sure to make it "unique"!
Temprance
Merie
Ceceila
Nathainal
Nathanael
Micheal
Grayce
Xzavier
Mersades

All Stars
Amiah Precious (I don't know, are you?)
Amiah Angel (same question)
Jessyjames
Michelangelo (luckily there is a LOT packed into the first name, since there's no middle name. But needs one, really, with a first name like that?)
Danny Supreme (sounds like a tasty deli sandwich!)
Heavenly Dreama-Mary
Jaquoia Hopes Blessing
Darker Selwyn
ZyMail (fascinating to think about what kind of "mail" that would be)

Best name EVER
Unique Leygh (really? Just like mom???)

The biggest surprise? I found myself shocked- SHOCKED!- when I ran across a baby named . . . John. John, the top ten of boys names for a century, now made a single appearance as John William. Ahhhh, after all of that, how refreshing.

NAMES NAMES NAMES

2009-01-17T11:44:00.008-05:00

Disclaimer: People have strong opinions- and emotions- associated with certain names. The following is not intended to offend the reader or judge the namer. I just report the facts! Now, on with the show . . .

If you've had any contact with me for the past couple of months, chance are good that I've bored you with talk about my favorite topic: BABY NAMES. I've been pretty obsessed with them as the pregnancy chugs along, probably because they are a far less stressful topic to read up on than things like breast feeding and diaper changing (guh-ROSS!) I have become something of an expert, not only on the specific top names, but on the latest trends in baby-naming (so they can be avoided, as necessary). Sadly, I even know the top names by country.

For example, in England, the name "Lettice" is climbing fast. It took me ages to figure out that this name is most likely pronounced "Letitia." Oops! Yes, friends, danger lurks in baby-naming-land. If you want to play it safe, name your son "Jack," since it has held the #1 (or close to it) position in the UK, Ireland, and Australia, and it is becoming ubiquitous in America.

Because our last name is the 3rd most common in the United States, it is particularly important to us to avoid the most common first names, but obviously not pick a name that is so unusual that it brands the kids as freaks, right? Hence our challenge. Since I've become such a repository of info, here is the baby name tutorial:

Some trends, historically speaking:

Boys' names, finally branching out: For most of the 20th century, boys names exhibited hardly any diversity. You know these "usual suspects": John, James, Michael, Thomas, Robert, Frank, etc. A hundred years ago, these names each controlled up to 5% of the baby name market, whereas now the top boy name controls just over 1%. This lack of diversity is explained by the tendency to pass on male names (i.e., junior) and the fact that men's names are seen as sources of family tradition and lineage. Starting about 30 years ago (and probably partly due to changing immigration trends), boys names started to diversify to the point that for-decades-top-5-John is now barely hanging on to the Top 20. Expanded By contrast, girls names are much more subject to ever-changing ideas of beauty, whether it be gem stones (Ruby, Pearl, Opal) or flowers (Violet, Daisy).

Girls names: Hot, then not: Girls names have tended to become wildly popular, shooting to the #1 or #2 spot, then dramatically falling out of favor, for no apparent reason. As a result, some names allow you to practically carbon-date the owner (sorry, ladies- we didn't name ourselves, right?) Some examples:

Minnie (1880s)
Dorothy (1920s)
Marilyn (1930s)
Judith, Carol (1940s)
Linda (1950s)
Lisa (1960s)
Jennifer (1970s, 1980s)

The 1970s/80s: Back to Nature: This era brought the earth-mother out, as people looked to nature for inspiration and came up with: Dawn, Heather, Crystal, Ginger.

Recent Trends:

Place Names: Starting in the 1980s, it's as though the country cashed in its frequent flyer miles. From exotic locales (London, Paris, India), to U.S. states (Dakota, Montana) to the downright familiar (Brooklyn- the 57th most common name, nationally, but, interestingly, not to be found on the NYC registry- they must have been there and known it is not a place you want to name your precious baby girl after!)

Cutting Edge Trends:
Nouns: Apple, Satchel, Story, Sonnet, River

Granny-cool: (Note: many of these overlap with the below-listed "Colors"): These are the names that were hot hot hot at the turn of the last century: Grace, Lily, Eve, Anna, Ivy.

Colors: Violet, Ruby, Scarlett and even Cerulean (I don't even know what color this is).

I am going to stop here because A) I could go on forever and B) I'm getting bored!
You might be wondering what the pizza-baby photo has to do with this entry. The answer? Absolutely nothing. However, if you want to play "name this baby," particularly using any of the tools above, that would be fun, too. How about "Crispin"? or "Swaddle"?

Eating My Way through Downtown L.A. . . .

2009-01-11T22:20:00.004-05:00

If you are reading this blog, you are probably A) a blood relative and/or B) close enough to know that I'm pregnant (due in April, don't know the gender, thanks for asking). So it should not be surprising that I'm a bit food-obsessed lately. Not only because I'm hungry all the time, but also because, at this stage in the game, you can actually influence their palate.

I would prefer that my children have a broad world view, and this includes being open-minded about food. Unfortunately, Binghamton is not exactly the place to indulge the taste for global cuisine, so I was on a mission during my trip home to LA for Christmas. But I took it beyond having dim sum for breakfast at 7:30 am in Chinatown and doner kebabs in the Jewelry District for late lunch.

Above is a photo of sausages we tried at a brand-spanking-new sausage/fries/beer joint called Wurstkuche, in the Arts District (of course). To call it a "restaurant" is not really fair, because it is more of a teleportation device, transporting the customer to modern-day Berlin or something. Very euro and very cool.

But, in my current condition, I couldn't just order off the "Classics" or even the "Gourmet" section of the menu. No, I had to go for the "Exotics." And that descriptor is not an overstatement. During my trip home, I sampled the Alligator & Pork sausage (a tiny bit fishy) and the Duck & Bacon (it's so right, it can't be wrong). But the best one, and the thing that gave me happy dreams that night, was actually the Rattlesnake & Rabbit with Jalapeno Peppers sausage. There is something about rattlesnakes and rabbits that just goes together- possibly because they inhabit the same ecosystem. Anyway, strongly recommend that one, and the place in general. I went three times in four days!

Below is a photo of the famous Bacon Donut that I'd previously written about, but finally got to taste. The best part is that it's covered in maple syrup. So decadent. Not my speed, but I'm still glad it exists. Now that I'm thinking about it, I may regret my gustatory exploits at this stage of the pregnancy. The twins may emerge with a hankering for boneless chicken feet!

NYC public comment

2009-01-11T22:05:00.002-05:00

I have been terrible about blogging lately, partly because I am distracted by other things, and partly because wintertime is a period of intense hibernation- I just don't get out much!

We went to NYC every weekend leading up to Christmas, however, and I had intended to write about some of the things I found there. I can't remember the brilliant blog I was going to write about this photo, so I'll just post it and give a brief caption. It says:

"Bring Back our Wreath, BITCHES! . . . who steals a wreath? . . . really?"

This was posted on the front door of a hipster bar in the Lower East Side, and the message just made me laugh. So poignant. So true.

Dental Wigs?

2008-12-24T20:33:00.002-05:00

Walking around in downtown LA is one of my favorite things to do. You are guaranteed to see something extraordinary, often a drug deal or other bit of skid row "commerce" (I won't go into detail but you can be certain that I've seen a LOT of eye-popping activity). But a couple days ago I saw something so unique: a storefront offering something called a "dental wig."

Huh, now those are two words that just do NOT go together. And a google search yields only a handful of hits. According to one website, a dental wig is exactly what it sounds like: a wig for teeth; a fashion accessory, like shoes, for example. But these babies are not made by dentists, but instead are an impression made by the the consumer himself, then pressed into place "like a lego block." Of course. Makes perfect sense.

This might shed more light on the subject: a verbatim excerpt from the company's website (http://dentalwig.com/English.html)

What is Dental Wig?
Dental Wig or DENTAREL as a hair wig is a false tooth , a no medical, no damage , painless custom-made product , thanks to the oneself and only-use dental impression kit , international patented and copyrighted , which replaces missing teeth. Dental wig is an upscale product.

Remember, kids, you read it here first!

Why the Mall scares me.

2008-12-14T20:23:00.001-05:00

How much would YOU pay for a 17-course lunch?

2008-12-14T19:56:00.005-05:00

Last week I read in Time Magazine about one of the country's hottest chefs, David Chang, and his mini-empire of restaurants in Manhattan's Lower East Side. The thing that caught my attention in the article was that his food is not only incredibly inventive and borderline bizarro, but it is accessible to and borderline cheap. The problem of getting a table remains, but we arrived at Momofuku Ssam Bar at 11:28 am, just in time to beat the 11:30 am rush when they opened the doors on Saturday. And yes, the tiny place was full by 11:35 am.

After a truly kick-ass meal (I won't call it a brunch because there was nothing breakfasty about it) that included items like steamed buns with pork belly, a ham & chicken liver terrine sandwich, pork shoulder scrapple with egg, and a salad of . . . ready? thinly sliced beef tendon with pickled green mango and spicy peanut thai dressing. (The waitress sweetly pointed to her heel when explaining where the "tendon" comes from- thanks a bunch for the visual.)

After lunch we went to the adjacent/sister place- Momofuku Milk Bar- for dessert. We were boring and had a piece of brownie pie, but even this casual bakery/fast-food place has some crazy offerings like Chorizo Challah, and salty pistachio ice cream topped with potato chips. Around the corner and down a block is a third Momofuku location, Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is downscale but also extremely cool.

I know this is all rather boring to read about, but A) I need to keep writing and this is the most interesting thing I've done this week, B) I'm still amazed by the fact that we got a table at Ssam bar and also obsessing over the wacky food we ate, and C) this is all prelude to my stopping by the 4th location of the Momofuku empire, Momofuku Ko.

Momofuku Ko has a tiny street presence, is barely marked and has dark tinted windows covered by a heavy (but artsy) metal mesh. Thinking it closed, I literally pressed my nose to the door. What a DORK. Here are some fun facts about Momofuku Ko:

1. There are 12 seats. Total. Actually, they are backless stools. All at a bar. The restaurant is entirely visible here . And no waiters. Just the chefs.

2. Reservations are allotted only via the restaurant's website, only exactly one-week in advance, and are snapped up in literally a matter of seconds/minutes.

3. Although the other restaurants post reasonable approximations of their ever-evolving menus, Momofuku Ko's was shrouded in mystery (but I was able to find the general outline, here), begging for further inspection.

4. Opened just this year, Ko has a cult following.

After smashing my face against the metal exterior to get a glimpse inside, I could see people inside and opened the door. The conversation with the unexpectedly nice hostess went like this:

Me: "Hi, can I see a menu?"
Too-skinny-hostess: "I'm sorry, we don't publish a menu."
Me: "Well then, how do people order?" (I'm waaaaaay too smart, of course)
Too-skinny-hostess: "It's prix fixe."
Me: "Well, then, how much?"
Too-skinny-hostess: "$160 for lunch and $100 for dinner."
Me: [stunned silence]
Too-skinny-hostess: "We also offer wine pairings." (as in, that will cost you extra)
Me: "Why does lunch cost more than dinner?" (because normally a $160 lunch would translate into something like a $250 dinner, right?)
Too skinny hostess: "Lunch is 17 courses."
Me: [confused look on my face, walk out, still processing this conversation.]

So, wait, if I pay $160 for lunch, I get 17 courses, but at dinner I only pay $100, so do I only get 10 courses and walk away hungry? And how much is the wine? Turns out you have to shell out an additional $50, $85 or $150 for the privilege of getting a buzz on, during your $160 lunch. Which you are informed will take three hours. For lunch.

Bacon, Olive Oil and Bone Marrow: They're not just for breakfast, anymore!

2008-12-07T09:34:00.006-05:00

Perhaps because there is so little variety in the food we presently have available (nearly three years into it, I'd kill for a fish taco!), we find ourselves being a bit more adventurous than usual when we do run across unusual offerings. And our frequent trips to NYC are feeding(!) this trend, big time. Perhaps these unusual ingredient combos have gone mainstream without my notice, but I still think they represent an exciting infusion of creativity into food that is accessible by Average Joes like us.

BACON
Perhaps it is a recession-favorite comfort food, but I predict that you will soon find bacon in common things like Ben & Jerry's ice cream. That was not a joke. Bacon's salty/greasiness actually pairs quite nicely with fatty sweets. Check out these examples I've recently seen:

BACON DONUT: You can bet this baby will be at the top of my eating agenda when I go to LA for Xmas. It's offered a very hip new diner downtown on the uber-sketchy block of 5th and Main at The Nickel Diner.

CHOCOLATE + BACON: Continuing with the bacon-meets-sugar theme, we have a $7.50 Bacon Chocolate Bar available at the super-swanky chocolatier, Vosges. Vosges gets bonus points, and almost warrants an entire blog entry, for its crazy ingredients like tobacco, curry, hot chili, and mushrooms. But more about Vosges chocolate later.

ANYTHING SWEET + BACON: As I was working up this blog entry in my little mind last night, reading an article in Time Magazine, I chanced across the reference that sealed its fate: A reference to a roving dessert truck taking NYC by storm that serves . . . chocolate bread pudding with a bacon crème anglaise, of course!

BOOZE + BACON: I don't know why this should gross me out any more than the above-mentioned things (which actually sound really TASTY to me), but a bacon martini just seems over-the-top to me. Can you imagine being on a date, or at a business dinner, and someone ordering this? Bizarre-o. Bacon does not belong in a bar setting. I don't care if it IS "candied."

OLIVE OIL
Good ol' Olive Oil's lubricious qualities do not lend themselves to such compelling blog photos, but that is not to discount the subtle force of this ingredient.

CHOCOLATE + OLIVE OIL: Perhaps the tastiest piece of chocolate I've ever had was something from Vosges in SoHo called the d'Oliva. It is olive oil-infused chocolate truffle inside a white chocolate shell. But the magic comes in the form of the bits of kalamata olive sprinkled on top. Who would have guessed that those deep purple, super salty olives would be so freaking amazing on top of the perfect chocolate base?

GELATO + OLIVE OIL: Perhaps the most famous gelato place in NYC right now is Il Laboratorio de Gelato on the Lower East Side, an unassuming counter-window next to the popular Tenement Museum. Each day they offer just a small slice of their many, many flavors, and yesterday we got to try Olive Oil. How was it? Meh . . .

BONE MARROW
BONE + MARROW, Straight up: While having a nice brunch with some girlfriends in Tribeca last month, I chanced upon this item on the menu, amidst the various forms of eggs Benedict and funky french toasts: Bone Marrow. No, not "bone marrow infused omelet," not that it would make it so much more palatable, just . . . BONE MARROW. I almost ordered it, out of pure curiosity, but the place wasn't cheap and I knew no one else would be interested in sharing it. More importantly, one of the girls is a vegetarian, and I thought it would be quite rude to order up a stack of bones and suck out the innards, at least before noon.

I also caught it on the menu at a place in LA, Mario Batali's new Pizzeria Mozzo, so it seems to have gone bi-coastal.

Personally, I am hoping NOT to see Ben & Jerry's bone marrow ice cream at our local Wegmans any time soon. But hey, who knows? And, now that I think of it, Bone Marrow Lean Pockets might be . . . yummy?

Doilie Fest 2008

2008-11-23T23:55:00.001-05:00

When we went to NYC yesterday, I did have the express goal of buying some stocking stuffers. Somehow, however, I found everything but, and returned after having purchased exactly 1 used book (for myself) and a couple of crispin apples (for the bus ride home).

Never fear, any readers who might also be on my Christmas list: Binghamton came through with a big dose of DOILIE, brought to you complements of St. Patrick's Catholic Church (I would have linked to the church's website, but regular readers will understand that such new-fangled things are not so common in Binghamton.) I spent less than $30 and came back with three bags full of delights, including homemade (that goes without saying, since 100% of the goods for sale were handmade) fudge, a $0.50 hand-painted Christmas ornament, blankets (yes, plural), a scarf, pumpkin bread, . . . the list goes on. I am hopeful that I was able to navigate through this sea of awful granny stuff and pluck out the handful of cool items, but who knows- my Binghamton goggles are probably pretty thick these days!

NYC: the literary city

2008-11-23T23:19:00.002-05:00

One of the things that always impresses me about NYC is how literate everyone is. Not only does that city of 8 million people sustain the very smartly written New York Times, overflowing with feature-length articles, but it has readership to spare, for the New York Post and others. My theory is that the huge percentage of people who take public transportation to work have extra time- time that Angelenos spend frustrated in their cars- to take in the day's news.

But that theory does not go far enough to explain these two photos. The first is people lined up outside the famous Strand Bookstore and its "18 miles of books." This is in sub-30 degree weather, mind you. Granted, they are there to sell their used books, but the point is that there is a demand for these books, such that they are getting decent money for them. No one in LA cares about books enough to make such a big market for the used ones, that's for sure.

But the best observation I had all day was when we were parked in a (mercifully warm) coffee shop in the West Village, taking in the bohemian surroundings. That's where I spied these two guys, trying their hardest to be low profile, but they could not escape my eagle eye: they were hobos.

OK, maybe they did not arrive at the coffee shop by train, or even NYC by train, but they otherwise fit the hobo profile: borderline homeless looking, but with enough mainstream trappings (e.g., cell phone, ring, relatively clean clothes) to imply that they did not actually live on the streets.

I admit I was actively observing them. I especially liked it when one of them got up and returned with a glass of water that sported a hearty slice of fancy lemon wedge in it. The guy sucked down that healthy bit of fruit straight away. I mean, how often do hobos get access to citrus? Smart man. A savvy "gentleman of the rails," if you ask me.

But nothing could have prepared me for when one of them opened up his suitcase-style drag bag and pulled out . . . a stack of BOOKS. I'm not talking about road maps or girlie magazines, either. These thing were hard-cover. Literature, even.

So, there you have it: NYC, where even the hobos are bibliophiles.

Icelandic Schmaltz Fillets and Boneless Chicken Feet

2008-11-23T22:22:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we went to NYC, with no particular agenda. A couple of themes did emerge, however. One of them was that New York really does have the craziest variety of food on the planet.

We stopped into a pretty famous Jewish deli on the Lower East Side, with the very cool name of Russ & Daughters. It offered seemingly every kind of Jewish comfort food, from egg salad to pickled salmon to caviar to blintzes and beyond. Unlike lots of old school delis, this place has made the transition into the 21st century quite gracefully. (I am going to attribute that to the presence of the "daughters.")

I can understand why real New Yorkers get wistful for their favorite comfort foods when they move away. Witness this photo: Not even in Beverly Hills/West Hollywood have I seen "Icelandic schmaltz fillets." And I had been craving those babies all day, let me tell you.

We ended up eating at a kitschy Cantonese place that I'd been reading about, called Congee Village, also in the Lower East Side. Thank god the menu had clear English translations, because the "special plates" were 16 of the most gut-wrenching items I've ever seen in one place, hands down. I will list them here, in their full glory (and including any typos):

#301. Duck's blood with ginger and scallion.
#302. Duck's blood with chives.
#303. Baked fish intestine in clay pot.
#304. Goose intestine with soy sauce.
#305. Goose intestine with black bean sauce.
#306. Boiled goose intestine with bean sprouts.
#307. Fried intestine.
#308. Pickle vegetable with intestine.
#309. Soy bean sprouts with intestine.
#310. Cold jelly fish.
#311. Boneless chicken feet with Thai sauce.
#312. Duck tongue & sugar peas with XO sauce.
#313. Cold preserve egg mix pickle.
#314. Wasabi mix three kinds sea foods.
#315. Sun dried dace fish steamed with preserved pig's belly.
#316. Steamed silver fish & dried squid with soy sauce.

Is this a joke list? It sounds more like something out of a haunted house horror chamber. I think the worst one is the #312- how many ducks' tongues can you really eat?- but then I think about #311 and picture the puddle of skin that must be . . . boneless chicken feet.

Welcome to Hunting Season

2008-11-15T10:57:00.006-05:00

It's a good thing I read the local paper once in a while, or I might have missed the fact that the Venison Donation Coalition, Inc. is looking for donations of "field dressed deer" to local food banks. A good cause, I'm sure, but it begged the question: What, pray tell, is "field dressed deer?" Here's the Idiot's Guide to Field Dressing your kill, for handy reference. If you can get past the "False Hoods" (the misspelling makes it sound like a KKK reference?) section, through the bit about "tarsal glands," more power to you. I couldn't.

What the newspaper bit really announced is that Hunting Season is upon us. How I could have missed this, just by looking around, I don't know. The observant local will start to notice an increase in hunting-themed . . . dare I call it "sportswear"?

There are basically two kinds of wilderness t-shirt that I have learned to distinguish: the first I will call The Napoleon Dynamite, or the Lone Wolf style. These shirts are more for the urban hunting-enthusiast, or a frustrated hunter, but not necessarily someone who actually hunts. For example, I've seen older women in the Lone Wolf style, featured below. Also, teenage boys.

Then there are the kind favored by the real hunters. These are more "work shirts" but they can still be in t-shirt style. These cost more, which presumably explains why they do double and triple duty as hunting attire, mall wear and Sunday best. I've spotted the button-down collar kind paired with light-acid-wash blue jeans and work boots on what looked like a date, recently. Fancy.

We are taking our semi-annual trip to the dreaded Mall today. I have high hopes that my own hunting- for these sweet shirts- will be fruitful. I'll be sure to report back with any that I'm able to "bag" with my handy pink cell phone camera.

Word of the Day: "Pomace"

2008-11-09T20:41:00.009-05:00

Continuing on with our celebration of the Harvest (or something like that), today we visited a local-favorite called The Cider Mill in Endicott, NY.

I was specifically on a hunt for these TREMENDOUSLY tasty apples we recently discovered, then could not locate again. They are called Crispin apples (note typo on sign) and they rocked my world. After I ate all 20 from the big bag we bought here a couple weeks ago, I went into withdrawals- I dreamed of these things, not kidding, all crisp and firm and sweet and tart and juicy, they are. So today I bought- ready? - FIFTEEN POUNDS of them. I think that's only(??) like 30 apples. Whatever. I can replenish next week, now that I know where to find them.

The Cider Mill is a local fave, in no small part, because people like to bring their kids there to watch the apples being "pressed" in this room full of big machines. It is mildly cool to see how they start out with whole apples, then put those into a grinder/mulcher type of machine, then those get pressed and pressed and pressed and pressed until all the juice comes out.

And that is where we get THIS nastiness. It's called "pomace" and it's just wrong, wrong, wrong.
The apples looked so beautiful going into the process, but this pomace shizzle that comes out the other end? YUK. I don't know which is better: the fact that the informational signs said that pomace is used for "feeding livestock and also for fertilizer," or the fact that some school kids wrote a Thank You note to the Cider Mill, and noted that the girls thought the cider press was "sick."

In life and in Binghamton, you have . . . "Choice's"

2008-11-08T17:18:00.000-05:00

Binghamton has so many "dive bars" that I really don't notice them anymore. I mean, these are bars that I drive by and think are out of business, but then I notice . . . a hov-a-round or something outside, and see a bit of neon creeping out of a dirty window.

But this one, directly across from the main post office, and right near the busy, family-oriented minor league baseball stadium, really takes the cake.

You see, in life, you have choices. Or "Choice's," as some people call them. And kids, if you make BAD Choice's, you might end up drinking your days away in this dump, conveniently located adjacent to the local sex-offender/prostitute-row.

I am almost positive it is long-closed, but that pile of rubbish at the base of the dilapidated sign is making me think twice about that assessment. I've seen worse . . .

Election Day: New York State-Style

2008-11-04T08:51:00.006-05:00

The good news is that I waited in line exactly ZERO seconds to vote this morning (shocker- there are no lines anywhere in Broome County- you have to have PEOPLE to have lines!)

These voting machines are circa-I-don't-know-when but judging by the sweet wool plaid fabric of the curtains- maybe 1950s? 1960s? Once you are inside, there is a huge lever you have to pull a few times and it feels like you're driving a tractor or something. Crazy.

Apparently they are retiring these machines after this year- aw come on, they've got at least a couple decades left in them! Seriously, though, the layout of the voting card was so confusing- I had to have the poll worker talk me through it. I stuck my hand through the curtains and was talking to him and giving hand signs, counting off the number of races I was voting on, as I read them off to him, just to make sure I was voting in the proper number of places. It took me so long that a small (3 people) line formed behind me. John was trying to busy himself with his iPhone, and pretend he didn't know me!

Sunday's auction

2008-11-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

We made it to the monthly "estate" auction in Candor, NY on Sunday. Sometimes, a picture truly IS worth a thousand words.

(This reminded me of a great t-shirt we often see in NYC, one that reads "Welcome to the gun show" but is referring to the wearer's massive biceps, of course.)

Perhaps even freakier was the fact that, in addition to a tremendous amount of guns, the OTHER much- publicized thing was a collection of old dolls.

I don't know which scares me more, the guns (and their fans) or the dolls.

The Earth Room (SoHo)

2008-11-02T14:28:00.004-05:00

Amidst a busy shopping trip to SoHo on Saturday, I dragged my two girlfriends just a block off crazy-crowded Prince Street to a slightly less-teaming, but still swanky and commercial section of Wooster Street. I thought I had the address, but wasn't feeling so confident about finding the place, so I asked a few shopkeepers if they knew where The Earth Room is. "Huh?" their blank stares said back to me. I started to get worried when I inquired with the store directly below The Earth Room and still had not received a trace of confirmation that I was not, in fact, nuts.

My two friends already know I'm a bit odd, so they weren't actually that surprised when we arrived at the nondescript gray door to the right in this image. On the building directory, amidst the Joneses in 6A and the Levys in 3B, we found the listing for "Earth Room- 2B." SUCCESS!!! We buzzed and were let in. As we walked up a narrow staircase, the air got cooler and the smell of dirt became stronger. You can imagine how much crap my friends were giving me as we ascended the stairs. They were loving it, though: "We came all the way from rural Binghamton to NYC to see . . . dirt? Wait until we tell the other girls where you took us!"

Just when I thought I'd seen the most random things possible in NYC- I mean, I have dug DEEP: under bridges, through abandoned ship yards, out to islands- I find THIS.

And THIS, my friends, is The Earth Room. It is essentially 22 inches of dirt plopped into a 3,600 square foot loft space on the second floor of a residential building. But not just some dumpy building: A unit upstairs is selling for $2,650,000. I wonder if the neighbors despise having this freaky thing in their building, or love it because it doesn't throw loud parties?

You still aren't getting this, because it makes no sense. WHAT is The Earth Room? I guess it would technically be called art. It was installed in 1977- that's right, this dirt carpet has been there for over 30 years! - in a long-gone gallery. It was supposed to be up for just 3 months, but the gallery owner decided not to dismantle it, custodianship has been passed off, and here it still sits. The artist did two other similar installations- both in Germany- but this is the only one remaining.

We didn't pause long, actually. There's only so long you can stand in a darkened room full of white walls and dirt. So I went over to talk to the attendant. "After hours, do you ever go in there and roll around in the dirt?" Turns out, he actually tends to the dirt. That's right - cares for the dirt. Each week he waters it and plows it under or something (I don't know the terms, here, as I'm a city girl.) He said something about it being unadulterated earth - free of outside forces and the elements.

The smart-ass in me quickly asked, "What if I came in with a handful of birdseed and threw it on there? What then, huh?" "It's already been done." Wait, I thought this dirt was pristine? At least, as pristine as something that is thousands of years old can be (dirt IS ancient, by definition, right? Or am I being really ignorant here?)

I don't know. I can't find out much about this Earth Room. Except that, with all those thousands and thousands of shoppers passing by outside every day, it only gets about 30 visitors a day. Which is kind of a bummer because I bet there are a ton of NYC kids who have never seen such a vast amount of fresh earth, even if they can't touch it!

Mr. Power Mullet

2008-10-11T22:30:00.003-04:00

In keeping with the local hunting theme, it was only appropriate that the below-described Extreme Pumpkin Farm would have at least one hunting-themed vignette, amidst the scads of Little Red Riding Hood and Sponge Bob pumpkin-people.

But the real reason I include these photos is because the second one captures the aggressively-mulleted guy who had just offended us. Here's what happened:

John and I are watching a kid do the Apple Fling (think "giant slingshot with rotten apples") when this family walks up to check it out. The perfectly nice young boy starts talking to us about what kind of fruit flinging he is able to do in his own neighborhood. Then he turns to the dad-like-figure with him and says,

BOY: "Chuck, how big is our back yard?"

"Chuck" caught my ear- this was not "Dad" and, upon closer inspection of "Mom" and her other kid, "Chuck" was probably a Jim, Bob, Jim Bob, Larry, Daryl, and Daryl away from the kid's "dad," sadly.

So how did Mr. Power Mullet respond to the innocent question?

CHUCK: "Who the Hell cares how big our back yard is, jackass."
CHUCK: [Muttering under his breath as he lights a cigarette] "Eleven years old and too chicken shit to go in a Haunted House . . ."

Poor kid. At least we can surmise that Chuck won't be around long.

Extreme Pumpkin Patch: Jackson's Farm in Campville

2008-10-11T20:59:00.005-04:00

By October, we have transitioned out of my beloved "festival season" (i.e., the summer full of Irish, Greek, Ukrainian, Pierogi, Garlic and Lumberjack Festivals) and I'm jonesing for a good excuse to get out and DO something on a Saturday. We wanted to get in some leaf peeping, so I suggested we venture about 15 miles west of Binghamton (i.e., heading into very rural New York) to a place I'd heard of.

Well, not exactly a "place" - more of a mecca. A pumpkin mecca, that is. No, not even a pumpkin mecca. Jackson's Farm in Campville, New York looks like Autumn EXPLODED onto a big patch of hillside off of State Route 17C. If it has anything to do with Halloween, the harvest, apples, pumpkins or being a kid, you will find it there. I tried to document some of its kitschy, homemade wonders, but I think I this covers about 20% of the offerings. There was literally EVERYTHING you could think of.

Yes, you are seeing an entire zoo made of pumpkin animals, including a HUGE elephant-sized one (the photos don't do it justice), a pirate-themed bouncy castle, massive spiders (there were like 10 of these things) outside a Haunted House (I couldn't capture the vast graveyard in front of it), face painting, pumpkin house, . . .

What I could not capture were things like the fact that the entire place- which must be several acres, is enclosed by a wooden fence with a double-row of mini-pumpkins standing only a few inches apart (that is a LOT of mini pumpkins!), the tractor show, the hay wagon rides, the dozens of fairytale-themed vignettes with dressed-up characters made of . . . pumpkins, the bake shop, the hamburger stand, the massive bins of every kind of apple, the funnel cakes, the tree house, the rock climbing wall(!!), the huge gift shop, the crazy squash, the full-size tee pee made of corn husks, candy apples coated in every color of goo you can imagine (including bright purple and blue!)

No, this is not your run-of-the-mill Pumpkin Patch that gets thrown up in a hay-covered suburban parking lot, just before the Christmas tree lot takes over. This is an EXTREME PUMPKIN PATCH. Side note: Sometimes I feel like an internet missionary or something, because many of things we come across here have not yet made it onto the ol' Information Superhighway. Not only does Jackson's Farm not have a website, but I can find barely a yellow pages entry for it online. Well, now we have glorious online photos online- hooray!

I wanted to pay special tribute to the Apple Flinger station (cost: 2 tickets) that was so simple and so simply awesome: some rubber tubing as the slingshot and a huge bin of mealy apples as your ammunition. GENIUS. This teenage boy was pulling waaaaaaaay back with all his weight and flinging these gnarly apples fifty yards uphill toward a pumpkin-headed scarecrow of a target. So awesome.

Special commendation also goes to the Pumpkin Hall of Fame, with its topical and well-executed Obama and McCain likenesses. Editorial note: Both of these pumpkins are smarter than Sarah Palin.

Leaf Peeping

2008-10-11T20:31:00.002-04:00

'Tis the season for that beloved phase of foliage when the leaves turn crazy colors just beautiful enough to keep people from quitting the god-forsaken East Coast weather (hot/humid/buggy summers, dark/icy/snowy winters). I learned that the act of going out and actively seeking out the spectacle is called "leaf peeping" which always makes me laugh and feel like a but of a nature perv, or something.

As beautiful as the hillsides are right now, like a big dotted bowl of Trix or a pointillist's canvas, I confess that I am not a nature girl, and was just as happy to see the leaves in the car mirror, telephone wires and all, than to have gone for a hike or something naturey (as Gov. Palin might say).

Photos really cannot begin to capture the quality of the light as it comes through these leaves in the afternoon. It can be shocking sometimes, with the odd tree so bright red and glowing with sunlight that it nearly looks ablaze. Definitely something that Los Angeles misses out on!

Red Lobster, anyone???

2008-10-11T19:49:00.004-04:00

I am vehemently opposed to national chain restaurants, so it suits me just fine that we live in a region where franchises mostly dare not tread. That leaves us going to lots and lots of family-owned restaurants and diners. The kind with hand-made signs in the bathroom, inconsistent offerings, and smoke-smelling waitresses, but really, really good pizza.

So it was pretty darn random that I inexplicably got the urge to try out, of all places, a RED LOBSTER restaurant in the vast strip mall of a town known as Vestal, New York.

We walked in the newly-remodeled space and I hit the ladies room. Was that . . . GRANITE counter tops? SO FANCY! I haven't seen granite since . . . before I moved here? OK, maybe once. Literally. And what's this? PROPER facilities that are actually code-compliant? And not a handwritten sign in sight. Amazing.

A look around the joint and I continued to be impressed. FOUR flat screen TVs, brand new nice wooden bar with brass details and everything (do I sound like a hick yet???)
As always with the ultra-American places (Applebee's anyone?), I was horrified by the blatant ways in which they brainwash you into buying the greasiest stuff (see the photo where I am commanded to "Taste the Possibilities" followed by larger-than-life photos of shiny, greasy, cheesy (and therefore tasty) food.

Another case in point: these biscuits. They can't just give you normal bread, they have to give you Bisquicky biscuits. But not just any Bisquicky biscuits- these are actually infused with cheese so they slide right down the gullet . . . I won't hide the fact that I consumed an entire one ("research for my blog," I reasoned).

When I told people at work that I'd ventured to Red Lobster, I was told that it had the best fish in town. This is probably a true statement, since there is virtually NO fish in town. And at nearly $50 (including tip) for the two of us, it cost about double what we'd normally pay for dinner out.

What did we order? We ran with the program and started off with some Cheese/Spinach/Lobster dip that inexplicably came with tortilla chips and salsa. But not just any chips- these were so super-infused with oil that I literally started to dab them with my napkin to get at the grease. No use, of course, that would defeat the purpose.

p.s. Gov. Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation, similar to new legislation in the City of Los Angeles, that will require restaurants with more than 20 (? I think?) outlets to post calorie and nutrition information. Normally I'm against putting more layers of bureaucracy on business, but man, this obesity thing is out of control and with restaurants like this, that are so expert at shoveling greasy fried stuff down hungry throats . . . one can only help that an informed public will make better choices and not pop down all those fried shrimp with tartar sauce, like I did!

Warning: Houses in Photo are Smaller Than They Appear

2008-09-28T18:54:00.005-04:00

I know people in NYC live in tiny spaces, but people come to Binghamton for cheap housing and room to stretch out a bit in big old turn-of-the-century homes. So this new house that is going up a few blocks from our house, at only 220 square feet, is really, REALLY crazy. Note: This photo shows the house in its ACTUAL SIZE.

Our 1.3 mile drive to my office takes us past a site that had long been home to a neighborhood eyesore: the polluted corner lot that was the longtime home to a dry-cleaners. I'm not sure why this stretch of street is so grubby- possibly the toxicity of the old dry cleaners?- but I routinely walk past trash that has included . . . a dirty diaper. YUK.

The dry cleaning biz had been closed/abandoned for years, and the City of Binghamton finally got some state funds to tear the place down. That left the site - located in a once-nice stretch of Seminary Avenue that has become pretty run-down- bare and ready for development. The only problem is . . . no one is building any new housing for miles.

So along comes a guy- apparently an unemployed sculptor who mostly lives with his mom not too far away - who decided he's going to build his own house. Keep in mind- he's not a construction guy or a contractor or anything. He's a surfer-looking guy who I noticed early one morning as I jogged by. It struck me as odd because he was the only man on the construction site. It looked like he was driving a rent-an-excavator or something- he just didn't match the big yellow piece of machinery he was using to work the lot.

As weeks have passed, the foundation has been poured, the wood framing and plywood walls have gone up, and the roof is starting to take shape. I had planned to do my own research and blog about it, but there was a front-page article in the local paper today that did all my work for me: apparently the guy bought the lot from the city for $5,000 and spent another $8,000 in materials. He did almost all the work himself. How did he learn how to build a one-man-living-hut? The library!

Yup! He credits the book "Do-It-Yourself Housebuilding" with teaching him everything he needed to know. Here are some more photos. Two hundred twenty feet. Cannot wait to see the finished product. Too damn funny.

National Alpaca Farm Days

2008-09-28T17:59:00.006-04:00

It's been a while since I blogged, probably because the summer festival season has tapered off. With the excitement of June's Irish Festival, July's priceless Lumberjack Festival and August's Garlic Festival fading from memory like hobos from the American rails. I will confess that I skipped the much-anticipated Cauliflower Festival yesterday, when I discovered that Margaretville, NY was about 80 miles from here. I don't care how much "white gold" they have for me- it still couldn't pay for the gas necessary to get there.

At the same time, we haven't quite yet begin the jam-packed Craft-Fair/Holiday-Fair Season, extremely busy in these parts. So you can imagine my excitement when I read that this weekend would host National Alpaca Farm Days. woo HOO! Hellllloooooo, fluffies!

I've written before about the ubiquitous alpaca farm in upstate New York. There are actually what appear to be "rival" alpaca farms around here, with multiple locations buying up TV ad time and generally marketing better than 95% of the local businesses. We decided to visit the one with the most clever name of all: located in nearby Apalachin, NY, the place is called "Alpacalachin Farms." Clever, eh?

Unfortunately, the weekend has been very rainy and the expected "fluffies" were, in actuality, more like "wets" and "matteds." At least they weren't also "stinkies." In fact, it turns out alpacas are very easy-to-live-with creatures: they are friendly, mild mannered, don't really bite or kick, have soft/non-hoofed feet, not particularly smelly and super-soft (when not carrying around 2 days' worth of rain in their fur). Bonus: they make a soft, sort of purring noise that the owners find quite soothing (I asked if it was like the roar of the ocean, or the hum of freeway traffic to him- neither of those analogies seemed to register.)

Can an entire brand of soda really stay off the internet? in 2008?

2008-09-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

Today we took a little trip to Owego (population 8,000), the bustling county seat of Tioga County (population 50,000). Owego is about half way between Binghamton and Ithaca, so- although it's the capital of a very rural farming region- it tends to feel a bit more like a cute Finger Lakes town than a burned-out industrial town.

Owego is a funny mix of really artsy boutique shops and throw-back stores straight out of 1952. My favorite is the J. J. Newberry's store- complete with teal facade and scripty-writing that you remember from your childhood.

Between lunch and browsing the great used book store and buying homemade fudge, we popped in to pick up a diet soda, but could not achieve that simple goal. How is that possible?? Because this Newberry's only sold something called "ADK" soda, in flavors like "cola" and "blue pop." Better yet? There was not a single diet soda in the entire store.

But the part of all this that really freaks me out is that I came home to dig up some info on this mysterious "ADK" brand of soda- and I can't find any information on it!!! It is possible that ADK is a product of Adirondack Beverages, but that is just speculation that even my crack-research skills cannot confirm or deny. What gives? Is it possible that this soda has escaped the information age? Has it been sitting in the storeroom of the Owego Newberry's since the 70s? I'm totally at a loss to explain it.

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, however, because this Newberry's also sells this most-fantastic-ever "rain bonnet," definitely not produced since 1962 (they must have really stocked up on this one, back in the day).

Actually, I'm trying to do some research now on J.J. Newberry's, the once-ubiquitous national chain of five-and-dime stores, and finding that the entire chain never have even merged onto the Information Superhighway. Were the chain's stores mostly closed by the early 1990s, and this is just a locally-owned store that never bothered to change the sign? Craziness. Time warp, for sure.

Navy Yard Lounge - the best/sketchiest dive bar in hipster Brooklyn?

2008-08-31T16:46:00.009-04:00

We've been going to NYC a ton lately, almost exclusively to Manhattan, and we've gotten a little bored by how clean and sterile everything seems to be. I even tried Hell's Kitchen, the Lower East Side and The Bowery, but still- a Starbucks and/or American Apparel on every corner, it seems.

Living where I do, I see some really BAD dive bars and other business establishments that I cannot believe are still open, given the sorry state of their exteriors. But I did not expect to see this phenomenon in a trendy neighborhood in Brooklyn (DUMBO). Well, it wasn't exactly IN the trendy neighborhood, perhaps, but certainly "adjacent," and definitely within stumbling distance of Williamsburg hipsters in pricey lofts who love slumming in places like this.

Yesterday, we walked several miles, from uber-trendy Williamsburg (Brooklyn) to newly-swanky DUMBO via Brooklyn's industrial waterfront. This trail is not exactly in the tourist guidebooks, but we self-styled "urban anthropologists" were looking for beauty like the dilapidated Brooklyn Navy Yards (which closed in the 1960s and parts of which are hauntingly decayed and overgrown at this point, particularly the Admirals' or Officers' Row housing).

When we came across this gnarly building, there was so much going on at the front door, I crossed the street for a closer look. The "rules" posted on the front door were just awesome- exactly like something I'd seen Upstate. Except they looked like a drunken pirate wrote them. What is with the 23-year-old-drinking-age? Belt-and-suspenders approach, I suppose.

It was about 4 pm and the front door was locked. Places like this usually open at like 6 am, right? I made a point to take a photo of the address so I could be sure to look the place up at the NYS Liquor Authority's website, to see how old the place was, and when it went out of business. Perhaps when the Navy Yard closed, 4 (count 'em FOUR) decades ago, leaving this area barren and desolate, except for a few public housing projects nearby?

WAIT! What was that catching my eye, a few feet around the building facade? Was it . . . a red neon beer sign light ON in the window? There is actually electricity running to this hellhole? I walked a few feet down the sidewalk to find the establishment's liquor license- valid 2006 through 2008! NO WAY!

I am all for dive bars- downtown LA's Skid Row has some excellent ones. But this one- I dunno, maybe it's because I don't know the area, but I just think you'd go in there and wake up in an alley, minus a kidney or something. It's just that scary. I have obtained liquor licenses before, and let me tell you- it is tough to get a liquor license in New York state. The authorities really put the applicant through the third degree, making them submit fingerprints, photos of the place, detailed drawings and an application so detailed it even asks what type of background music might possibly be played.

This place? How did it ever get - and keep- its liquor license? Even an allegation of prostitution, or one-too-many police calls to the place- and it's outta business.

The Superfly Hasidim of South Williamsburg, Brooklyn

2008-08-31T12:50:00.010-04:00

As we were wandering around Williamsburg, Brooklyn yesterday, we were struck by the huge number of Hasidic Jews walking around (it was their sabbath, so they were really decked out, and also traveling in family-packs.) Living in LA and New York, we've seen tons of orthodox Jews before. But the specific flavor we saw yesterday begged much more inquiry.

I had read about the conflict in Williamsburg between the 60-year-old Hasidic community there and the fast-encroaching artists and yuppies, but I didn't realize how huge and hardcore this particular Jewish community was.

A VERY BRIEF BACKGROUND
It seems that the Jews of South Williamsburg are a sect known as Satmars. They are Hungarian in origin, and the community began just after WWII, comprised mainly of newly-arrived Holocaust survivors. The sect stresses re-population of their decimated ranks, and we saw several families with 7 or 8 kids. There are about 200,000 Satmar worldwide, and about a third of that number lives in this little area in South Williamsburg. Due to the high birthrate, this community doubles in size every decade. I won't go into more detail here, because there is way too much to write about and I could never do it justice. If you're interested, I found a couple of blog entries- here and here- that are really excellent and detailed (lots of photos, too!)

[Side note: it's ironic that this conservative sect, which tries sooooo hard to stay isolated and apart from mainstream America, is now getting up-close-and-personal attention by the blogging community, probably as a result of all the hipsters moving into their neighborhood in recent years and coming into (at least visual) contact with them.]

THE HATS
Since my goal is to entertain (and not really to educate), I'll be shallow and drill down on the most immediately-curious thing about the Satmars: their SWEET HATS. These are not your ordinary-run-of-the-mill-Hasidic-guy hats. No, boring wide-brimmed fedoras they are not. These babies are TREMENDOUS. John described them as "mink cat beds." They are called shtreimel (or "ex-SHTREIM-el!!!" as John called them.)

Turns out, the Satmars are the only group that still wears these traditional hats, which are made of beaver and cost- ready? ready? are you SURE?- $5,000!!!! They are worn by married men, and traditionally given by the father of the bride. Tack THAT onto "miscellaneous wedding expenses." They are so pricey that they have become the object of theft and also, it seems, competition. Sort of the Satmar version of "bling," if you will. There is even a movement to cap their cost (get it? "cap"? ha!)

The Satmar wear other types of clothing that are definitely unique (why do all the girls and women have flowers on their black dresses?) The men wear black silk (something about a prohibition on wearing wool) robes that looked to me EXACTLY like Hugh Hefner's, along with some very sweet white socks and black slippers. If it weren't 80 degrees out, these Satmar outfits would be downright PIMP.

(Is that a lightening bolt I see headed my way???)

NYC GRAPHIC graphic design

2008-08-31T11:13:00.003-04:00

We were in DUMBO, Brooklyn yesterday- which is an artsy area carved out of crumbling warehouses, naval shipyards, and power plants. Which is why it was particularly ironic to see, amidst all this urban decay, someone would take such offense to the thought of a dog adding his own 2 cents to that mix. But really, REALLY, do ya have to be sooooo graphic? Gross.

Cupcake Haterz

2008-08-31T11:08:00.004-04:00

As we know, I am not cool. So if even I have known for some time now that $5 cupcakes are all the rage lately (thank you, Marie and Lauren!), they must be really huge. In L.A., it's Sprinkles and in NYC . . . I don't know- Crumbs? Magnolia? Not sure. Again, not cool enough.

But I did realize that cupcakes were so huge that they had become synonymous with a certain breed of hipster (that's the millennial name for the "yuppie scum" of 80s fame). Evidence: We were exploring a gritty, transitional area of Brooklyn yesterday and I couldn't help but laugh at this sticker I found slapped into the doorway of a rusty, crusty industrial building. The industrial area, DUMBO, was forgotten for decades after WWII until artists, priced out of SoHo, started homesteading in the 1970s/80s. By the late 1990s, it was all over for the starving artists, and million dollar condos are now standard. So enjoy this protest, all you cupcake eaters:

"DIE YOU HIPSTER YUPPY 2 KOOL TRENDY CUPCAKE BITCHES"!!!!

L.A. vs. Binghamton: Who has the better ranters?

2008-08-21T23:03:00.006-04:00

If you've ever walked around a downtown area, you may have noticed someone's ramblings scrawled on a sidewalk or parking garage wall. But unlike me (and apparently some of my friends, you probably never stopped to read it, much less photograph it and figure out where it came from. But that's why I'm here- to do these things for you, my dear reader.

LOS ANGELES VERSION OF RANTINGS

My LA-homie Marie had the good sense to send me this photo she snapped of some "sidewalk speech" she encountered at 4th and Main, where Skid Row rubs up (sometimes uncomfortably) against Hipster Heaven.

This tirade scores lots of points, actually:

1. Placement: right outside a popular community gathering spot. A wine bar, no less. And adjacent to City Hall-power broker lunch spot Pete's Cafe, a favorite of LAPD Chief Bratton.

2. Penmanship: I can't write that neatly on legal documents at work, much less with God-knows-what scratching on a gritty sidewalk.

3. Accountability: The writer specifically names the people he holds accountable for his gripe (in this case, the LAPD's crackdown on Skid Row "quality of life" crimes, possibly in response to a surge in economic development and loft-dwellers in the area). In naming the many objects of his wrath, the author hits all the right officials: the real estate developer who kicked-off the gentrification, the city councilwoman, LAPD Central Division Captain and the Commander, and the City Attorney.

4. Spelling Counts!: In naming these parties, he has better spelling than the L.A. Times some weeks. True, he flubbed City Attorney Delgadillo's name, and I note that he didn't even attempt the challenging Mayor Villaraigosa's (made up) name, but I won't hold either of these against him.

5. Messaging: After reading what I thought I was going to be an incoherent rant, I realized he's actually got it together. I hear him loud and clear: He's pissed at the "unequal application of the law" and that certainly does happen (best example I've seen: the monthly Art Walk attracts thousands of gallery-goers who drink wine in plastic cups while walking from gallery to gallery, yet Skid Row dwellers get cited for violation of "open container" laws for doing the same thing.)

6. Ownership: Very strong in the send off, O.G. Man. Way to put your full name (William Wrey Holt), and your Cowboy Name (Coyote Bill) and your Skid Row Name (O.G.) Failure to identify yourself would have been a missed opportunity at fame (like the kind he's experiencing right now, through my blog's massive readership.)

Bonus points for O.G.: He should have left a phone number or other way to communicate with him. "Any time, any place" just won't cut it. Who is Chief Bratton going to call to arrange the meeting being requested? Rookie mistake.

Negative points for ME: In the interest of full disclosure, of course I already knew who "O.G." was. I knew him as "O.G. Man," actually, but we all know that Skid Row names are jealously guarded, so their can't be two.

BINGHAMTON VERSION OF RANTINGS

In probably my most egregious example of my "everything in LA is better than everything in Binghamton" mentality, Binghamton's entry into the crazy ranting contest is pretty weak.

At first, I thought the flyer taped up in the window of a boarded up downtown storefront was just more Southern Tier Graphic Design, but then I realized that these things are slapped up all over the place. And none of them make any sense. It gets no points for anything, except maybe for highlighting?

This one gets points for neatness - some points, because it looks like they used stencils - but the message is lost on me. Also, it was on the sidewalk in a residential area with not a lot of foot traffic, so it might actually lose points for poor placement.

Do Facebook "status updates" count as "reading"?

2008-08-18T21:56:00.002-04:00

Since I began my love affair with Facebook (FB) a couple months ago, I've become particularly fond of reading people's "status updates." A.k.a. "twitter," FB status updates are the answer to the question "What are you doing right now?" They are meant to be fleeting: people sometimes update several times a day, or several times a week. Many people never offer a status update.

They tend to be very personal and offer a glimpse into the intimate details of people's lives, in a purely fun way. I decided I'm not a freaky stalker for liking them so much, since, by definition, they are actively offered up to be shared with the world.

When you post a status update, it typically broadcasts to everyone in your FB "friends" network. This network averages about 100 people- people you know- so you don't want to make an ass of yourself with a stupid status update. I have identified (at least) the following categories, with real -life examples of each (names have been redacted where necessary to protect the lame.)

Self Promoting:

[Girl from high school who wants to show everyone how cool she is now, via pretentious status updates] cannot seem to bring herself to unpack from her trip to the Turks and Caicos!

[Girl from business school, with same affliction as the above] is missing the Spa in Ojai.

[Self-styled stud of Manhattan Beach with 300+ FB friends, most of them ladies] is battling AT&T on insane international data charges.
("Insane" charges? Dude, we get it. You're so cool you travel internationally for work and/or pleasure, and apparently have really important stuff going on and must stay in constant contact with home-base at the beach.)

Party/Alcohol-Themed:

[Guy from my high school who lives in Thailand now and looooooooves to write about his crazy booze and woman-filled weekends in exotic locales] is recovering from a crazy and awesome weekend in Hong Kong & Macau!!!!!!

[Same guy as immediately above] just got back home... drunk as shit!! when i wake up today...i will be hurting for sure!!!!!
(At least he's consistent with his over-use of the exclamation point!!!! Why someone would want to broadcast that to 308 "friends," I am not certain.)

[Guy I barely knew through work in LA, who appears to be preparing to run for public office of some sort] is remembering why you should drink more water when drinking . . .
(Keep in mind, this went to all 766 people in his FB network. I can only assume that many/most are professional contacts, like me.)

Trying to make people think you are a better person than you really are (usually to impress chicks):

[Manhattan Beach dude referenced above] is listening to the Childrens Hospital LA Radiothon: http://www.1043myfm.com/pages/radiothon/.

Inane:
Taken out of context, these sample twitters are probably not nearly as annoying as they are in real life, so let's do a series from a single poster, to emphasize my point:

[Guy who will be crushed if he reads these and figures out it's about him, but there is only a slight chance of him actually recognizing his own writing because it's so damn generic]

. . . is getting ready for bed.

. . . has a full day planned.

. . . felt the earthquake.
(yes, you and - literally- 15 million other people. That's all you can give us?)

. . . is going to help my sister clean today.

. . . is off to the gym!
(this is his status update at least twice a week, usually quickly followed by " . . . is sore.")

. . . is relaxing after a really exciting weekend.
(Yeah, the excitement just oozes off of your posting. It's infectious, actually.)

For those of you who are reading this and wondering why I would be "friends" with someone who annoys me like these people do, you do not understand the unique set of social rules that govern FB relationships. FB friends are not necessarily (but may well be) actual friends. Many (most?) are the result of some sense of obligation, or just curiosity about what happened to these ghost-people from your past.

I know- I'm not perfect and I've certainly posted status updates that, taken alone, would probably fall into at least one of the above categories. But I like to think that mine are, at least, a variety- a potpourri, if you will- of slices of life.

Rest assured, status updates from my actual friends- and those people who bring me constant entertainment- bring nothing but joy. These categories and examples make my life worth living, as I sit in this remote bit of upstate New York for just a bit longer:

The Right Now:

Marie is noticing Chik-Fil-A is not as good as I remember.

Marie is very happy with her seaweed salad.

The FB-Themed:

Richard is suffering update status block.

Racquel got carried away w/sushi app; sorry guys. I figured out the more I send, the more sushi I can choose from.

Jamie is avoiding her children by playing on facebook and filling out this really lame "what are you doing now?" thing. So sad what it has come to.

Jonathan is pretty sure the new Facebook is poo.

Just hilarious:

Jonelle is not into man jewelry....especially bracelets and anklets...and definitely not together. (sorry guy sitting across from me).

Kristin saw a grown man drool in one long, vertical, mouth-to-floor rivulet this morning. While she was getting coffee.

Kristin just found out some Facebook spam went to her friends in her name, and now she feels bad, betrayed by the flimsy matrix that is the Internet.

Gerard just ate a piece of cheesecake the size of his head. NYC still does NOT suck.

Jed likes you.

Garlic Festival: Binghamton-style

2008-08-16T16:53:00.005-04:00

What do all these gnarly photos have in common? GARLIC, of course! Well, at least they were all taken at the annual American Civic Association Garlic Festival we just returned from today. Not exactly the one in Gilroy, CA, which is HUGE, but popular around here, nonetheless. We are desperate for ethnic food, so the mere promise of an enchilada is enough to get us to wade through the ubiquitous pierogi and holupki and pay the $1 entrance fee (not making that up).

The American Civic Association is a gateway for new immigrants to the US, helping them gain citizenship and generally adjust to life here. Once a year, those immigrants return the favor by making food from their homeland and selling it at the garlic festival. There is even garlic ice cream (which no country will claim because it tastes GNARLY).

We arrived and quickly locked in on the chicken enchiladas at the end of line- 2 each, please! Back at the (long, metal, plastic covered) table, the chicken enchiladas were lacking . . . moisture, that is. I took a chance and revisited the line to see if someone could scare up some salsa from the back.
"SALLSA?" she asked, confused.
Yes, salsa. "
SALLSA?"
Yes, that's it.
She returned with a huge jug of . . . BBQ sauce. I tried not to laugh.
"Not exactly, you know, salsa? It's made from tomatoes and you put it on Mexican food?"
She returned with an equally-huge jug of actual, Costco-style enchilada sauce. HEAVEN!!

Empower Jim Power! The Mosaic Man of the East Village

2008-08-10T14:01:00.008-04:00

Yesterday, John and I spent most of the day in the East Village, just exploring. As is my ritual, I read up on the area by finding a ton of articles about the neighborhood on the NY Times' excellent and easily searchable online database. So I guess it shouldn't be totally surprising that I spotted what appeared to be a homeless man, doing something not-so-legal to a public light post, accompanied by his trusty companion, and knew exactly what was going on: this was Jim Power, the famous "Mosaic Man" of the East Village!

Spend 10 minutes walking around the East Village and you cannot help but start to notice explosions of mosaic artwork affixed to things like walls, bus benches, sidewalks, light posts, you name it- Jim Power is the homeless/Vietnam Vet/artist who has been beautifying the East Village for twenty years. He is something of a celebrity in the neighborhood, and even has a memorably-named website: empowerjimpower.com.

My life appears to have become so uneventful that this sighting was my closest brush-with-fame in a long time. Pushing that sad thought aside, I vowed to blog about Jim Power (who looks remarkably like Garth from Wayne's World) because it seems that he is especially upset lately: his mosaics are falling into disrepair and are even being destroyed by city forces that don't respect the artistry and effort behind them. He's apparently so fed up that he's even destroying some of his own work.

P.S. What does it say about me that my husband was completely unfazed by the fact that I walked up to a homeless-looking guy, chiseling away at a lamp post with tools in his hand, and said "Is this Jessie Jane?" It's weird enough that I know the names and personal histories of tons of homeless people in Downtown LA, but why in the world should I know such intimate details about people in cities where I don't even live?

What good is a public park if you can't have any fun in it?

2008-08-10T11:24:00.003-04:00

A fourth Saturday in a row for me and NYC, yesterday, so again we have a NYC blog entry today.

I've written before about Bryant Park in NYC, and how it went from being overrun with drug dealers and homeless people to being a focal point for cultural activity in Mid-town Manhattan. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there are lots of rules now associated with the place.

But no "drug use"? How much fun can the park be, really? I also love the hypocrisy of the rule against alcohol, which is that you can't consume any in the park. Unless, of course, you are paying $15 for a glass of wine at the adjacent BP Grill or BP Cafe. In that case, no problem!

And again we see the anti-pigeon campaign carried out. Seriously, what gives with New Yorkers and their hatred of our winged friends?

Finally, maybe it's the lawyer-in-me, but this sign begs the question: What is an "organized ballgame"? Does that mean my friends and I can go play ball there, as long as we don't look like we know what we're doing? Unclear. Aren't these kinds of laws "void for vagueness" or something?

Upper East Side: "Home of the Bed Bug Beagle"

2008-08-03T21:22:00.003-04:00

Never in my wildest dreams (nightmares?) did I ever expect I'd find myself living in Binghamton, New York . . . blogging . . . about bed bugs. Here goes . . .

I was in NYC this weekend, enjoying a stroll through the very swanky Upper East Side, when I noticed this attention-grabbing truck. "Assured Environments" is the self-proclaimed "Home of the Bed Bug Beagle." I recalled that I'd written about bed bugs in NYC before, and I thought I'd revisit the issue and see what's up with bed bugs in 2008.

Turns out, NYC is facing a resurgence of the buggers, after largely eradicating them in the 20th century. People blame the uptick (pun intended!) on several factors: increased immigration from third world countries, inexpensive/increased international travel, and the banning of powerful pesticides (DDT, anyone?).

The part I didn't realize is that they don't just infest scummy flophouses (although please note the first sentence of that NY Times article I just linked to, which includes a "hobo" reference- BONUS!) but are equal-opportunity invaders. In hindsight, I should have parked myself near that bed-bug-beagle-blaring-bus and listened to the fussy, rich, plastic-faced ladies of the UES as they discovered the unwanted carriage outside.

Seriously, how bummed are you to find that van parked outside? In densely-packed NYC, with its common-walls and interconnected housing units, your neighbor's bed bugs are your bedbugs. I can hear the blame-game beginning: "I think Flavio brought them in- he's always taking business trips to Rome. I bet he returns with a suitcase full of them!" or "I saw Buffy's butler tossing empty bottles of DDT down the garbage chute- trying a home remedy, I say!"

So this company, Allied Environments, is pretty smart to capitalize on people's deep-rooted fear of bed bugs, and couple it with their equally-strong love for all things fluffy, like the sweet-faced beagle. Apparently you can literally train dogs to sniff out anything- from cocaine to peanut butter to bed bugs. And beagles are waaaay better house guests than DDT.

Pa's Woodshed = Papa Woody's?

2008-07-27T18:28:00.005-04:00

I am a little slow sometimes. Case in point: Late one Saturday night, John and I were exploring an old industrial neighborhood in Binghamton, sort of underneath the highway and adjacent to the train tracks (I know, we are soooo wild on the weekends). In the middle of a dark, abandoned-looking stretch of bad road, we came upon a dozen cars parked in the well-lighted lot of an establishment with a great sign, depicting a guy in an old "woody" car full of surfboards, bikini-clad girl in tow. "Papa Woody's" was the name of this funky new place, we learned.

"Imagine our luck!" I thought, convinced that we'd found a cool new restaurant or bar, undiscovered by our less-adventurous friends. John rolled up and I popped out of the car, to stick my head in: "I just want to check their menu and see if the food looks decent," I told John. No sooner had I closed the car door, than John figured it out, he told me later. Here's how I had to discover the secret:

I opened the door of Papa Woody's and was greeted by a blinding light. After a few seconds, my eyes adjusted enough to make out the figure of a woman below me to the right . . . a naked woman, that is . . . spinning on a pole. OOPS!

I did some digging (of COURSE!) and found out that this strip joint is located in what used to be a very popular and beloved furniture store called "Pa's Woodshed." Get it? "Pa's Woodshed" became "Papa Woody's"!! Bonus points for having a clever nexus between your legit-biz name and your hooker-joint name. (p.s. here are some reviews for the strip joint (Zagat's for nudie bars? who knew!), which has gone through several incarnations, none of them good, apparently.)

Turns out that Pa's Woodshed used to be a real landmark. On its rooftop (about where that janky old billboard now sits, decaying for travelers on both Interstates 81 and 88 to see) there use to be The World's Largest Chair! Yup, Pa's Woodshed had the World's Largest Chair- a nearly 25-foot-tall Ladderback one- according to the 1979 Guinness Book of World's Records. And there it sat for many years, becoming a local landmark. Not only was there a huge chair outside, but there was a huge overstuffed chair inside, too.

A little more online digging was worth the effort. Somebody actually made a video about the rotted leftovers of Pa's Woodshed, apparently before it became a strip joint. (Yes, it is a bummer how this area has decayed.)

Youtube coughed up the greatest gift EVER, though, when I came across some vintage (early 1980s) Pa's Woodshed commercials -Hobo Agamemnon J. Bonaparte, hobo housekeeping, one that shows the giant chair at the end, one called Hobo Teaser, and the ever-popular Hobo's Return(1990). Their marketing mascot was a HOBO? are you joking me???

"Prefab" housing: not all of it so "fab"

2008-07-27T16:04:00.008-04:00

Ever heard of a "Lustron" house? I hadn't either, until I moved to Binghamton. That's probalby because nearly all of them are located east of the Mississippi. Here's the short version:

After WWII, there was a severe national housing shortage. Building on the principles of mass production, an enterprising guy got a huge federal government subsidy (which later exploded into a major Senate corruption scandal), took over the old Tucker car manufacturing plant in Ohio, and started turning out prefabricated ranch-style homes made out of . . . steel coated with porcelain. If that sounds like the same material that bathtubs are made out of, it is.

Between 1948 and 1950, about 2,500 of these modest, one-story homes were produced. Marketed as requiring very little maintenance, someone forgot that they posed their own unique maintenance problems. Oh, and the fact they are freaking weird- that, too. At least they came in 5 flavors, uh, I mean, colors: pink Maize Yellow, Dove gray, Surf Blue and Desert Tan. Nice try from the marketing department, with the exotic imagery, but you can't fool me: these are all various shades of chalky-pepto-50s drab.

I first learned about these things because there are 5 of them in the Binghamton area. The super strange part is that I met two of those five homeowners within a few weeks! The jokes do not end with these houses: "How do you hang pictures? with MAGNETS?" "Do you use shower-scrubber to wash the thing?" I'm hilarious, I know.

In doing my research on these oddities of architecture and American kitsch and marketing, my fascination with prefabricated housing only deepened. So I was pretty excited when I read that the Museum of Modern Art in NYC was doing a special exhibit on prefab housing, including commissioning 5 prefab houses and erecting them on an open lot adjacent to MoMA. Opening weekend was this weekend and we were there!

The museum exhibit was pretty cool- for example, who knew that Thomas Edison made a bunch of "single pour concrete" houses in New Jersey? They even had a partially-reconstructed Lustron house that you could walk through (extra-special for me, since I haven't been able to convince either of our friends to give me a tour of their bathtub houses yet- perhaps it's my jokes).

Guess what? There is a great reason these things didn't take off: they are really ugly. Even worse, close up, than I would have thought. That low-maintenance finish? Well, it chips, just like a bathtub would, and how do you repair that? I think you can refinish a bathtub, but who do you call to do this to your house? There are a zillion other odd things about these houses- like they were heated by radiant heat from the ceiling or something, and had almost everything built-in so you needed an acetylene torch to reconfigure stuff. Lord help you if you wanted to add-on to these little things, either!

My disappointment is not reserved solely for the ill-fated Lustron; while the museum's exhibit was good (covering the past 200 years and including everything from residential Quonset huts to capsule-apartments for bachelors in Japan to Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House), the 5 pre-fab houses in the adjacent lot were really lame. These were the winners of an international competition, involving 600 entrants? Come on: one of them was made from plywood and looked like a sort-of-cool lifeguard station (inexplicably, with a granite kitchen counter and yet no other nice finishes). One of them- the tiny metal cube in the foreground of the photo- was smaller than a sleepover car on a train, yet, also inexplicably, included a big espresso maker that took up about 1/3 of the "kitchen" (with a sink, but no heating elements, of course) space.

There is so much cool stuff going on with manufactured housing lately- my favorite, of course, being the "Seatrain House," made from train boxcars on an industrial site near downtown Los Angeles. Dunno, maybe I missed something. Regardless, there's no such thing as a "bad" visit to MoMA- I mean, really, who can argue with the view?

The Lumberjack Festival

2008-07-20T21:09:00.007-04:00

There is a town called Deposit (population: about 2,000) about 30 miles east of Binghamton, that has a long relationship with the lumber industry. In fact, the town was named because it was the place where the logs were "deposited" into the river and floated downstream. So, for the past 32 years, the town puts on an annual Lumberjack Festival. I missed it last year and BOY was I bummed. It has literally been on my calendar for the better part of a year.

Which might explain why I was a little disappointed when I trekked out there today. Although it's technically a four-day event, I think a lot of the good stuff went down on Saturday. By Sunday, I was greeted by a "pony pull," which is apparently where they take a sled, pile it up with 2,000 pounds of weights, then have teams of ponies compete to see who can drag it farthest. Pretty boring to watch, actually, but seems to serve as yet another outlet for gambling (judging by the fact that the people sitting in front of me were quite excited to win first prize: $37).

I had hoped to see some good hard lumber, saws and sweaty men, but was primarily greeted by carnie rides, fried foods, and . . . sweaty men (YUK, on all three counts).

In 2008, I still do not see how those scary carnie rides seem to crop up all over the country at festivals just like this one. Who is letting their loved one ride on those things? They were rusty/crusty/rickety when I a kid, and they are only getting older by the year (ever see a new one? yeah, thought not), and the people running them? I will just quote my friend Steve, who wisely told me that carnie's "have small hands and smell like cabbage." He is Irish, so he should know.

The most action was probably going on at the horseshoe ring (field? lawn? pitch?) There were teams of people, with a player on each side, throwing horseshoes toward the other player (off to the right of this photo). This did not seem particularly safe to me, since the horseshoes were landing inches from the teammate and since the Rotary Club beer was flowing, but I guess the risk might be part of the thrill of it all.

I will never understand line dancing. These people looked positively bored as they stomped their way through songs like "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" (admittedly, a classic)

We went to the New York State Fair a couple summers ago, and I thought I had seen every fried food known to man. But this one slipped past me and I had to pause: anyone ever heard of a Zeppole? It is trying to be rooted in some Italian pastry, but at the Deposit Lumberjack Festival, "Zeppole" is I-talian for "greasy fried dough with sugary crap on top that makes you fat just walking past the booth."

I suppose I could have tried my luck at the raffle, but the prizes: a saw, some logger boots, and logger helmet- were not for me. Perhaps some free zeppole and a ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl could have enticed me.

Hobology 101

2008-07-13T20:11:00.011-04:00

Prologue: For a ridiculous amount of photos, check out this guy's website. He's apparently been hoboing since the 1970s and has documented much of it!

BACKGROUND
Anyone on Facebook who has noticed my "status updates" this week already know that I've been obsessed with a rather unusual topic all week: hobos. Not totally sure why, something I came across in the news on Tuesday that led me to think about the word and it just struck me- What IS a "hobo," anyway? It's not a word anyone seems to use anymore, so why did it fall out of fashion? And is it really derogatory? Something told me there was more to this story. I decided to dig in . . .

THE BASICS
Let me define some things, at the outset. This is sort of a famous quote from a guy named Ben Reitman, the self styled King of the Hobos, in the early 20th century:

"There are three types of the genus vagrant, the hobo, the tramp and the bum.
The hobo works and wanders,
the tramp dreams and wanders
and the bum drinks and wanders."

So basically, a hobo is a migratory worker. This is not a shameful thing, and hobos even have a code of ethics. It is also why ladies in old movies called their miscreant husbands "lousy bums" and not "lousy hobos." So I don't want to hear anyone griping about how I'm not being politically-correct in this posting: I will go head-to-head with anyone on hobology this week!

THE WORD
The etymology of the word "hobo" is in dispute, and there are explanations as lame as "it's an acronym for 'helping our brothers out'" to the creative "it originally referred to people from Hoboken." It seems, however, that the most agreed-upon origin is that it originally referred to "hoe boys," in reference to the fact that early hobos often traveled with their own gardening tool, for ready use in agricultural labor. See, aren't we already getting a new appreciation for the much-maligned hobo?

THE RISE OF THE HOBO
There was a time, more than a hundred years ago, when there were lots of unemployed young men in the Northeastern U.S., and a vast frontier to the west that needed unskilled labor on a seasonal basis. Transcontinental trains reached all the way to LA by 1885, so the party was ON, and all sorts of people hopped on the trains, which were much slower-moving back then and, being steam powered (as opposed to today's diesel locomotives) stopped often to take on more water. Double bonus: those water-stopping points were convenient hopping off/on points, complete with water, and became hobo camps known as "jungles." These were the traveler's internet cafes of the day, a place where people shared information and planned the next leg of trip.
The heydey of the hobo was from just after the Civil War until the Great Depression (i.e., the turn of the century, plus or minus 30 years). That's a darn long time and it's no wonder hobo-lore has been so pervasive in popular culture, although not at all in recent decades. Several famous people "hoboed" for a time (these are not to be confused with "notable hobos"): Jack London, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, even future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, singer Woody Guthrie, to name just a few.

THE FALL
Lots of factors conspired to drive back the hobo army, starting around the 1920s. First, train companies consolidated: what were once locally-owned regional train companies became national corporate giants with a bottom-line focus and money to spend on extra security and anti-hobo measures (hobos were often blamed for derailments, and things such as spoiled produce on refrigerator cars that had been opened to let in air). Second, agricultural mechanization reduced the need for large numbers of seasonal workers. Third, increasing unionization pulled many hobos into the mainstream. Fourth, the Great Depression, which swelled the hobo army into the millions, led to the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, and other work-programs that addressed some of the root causes of hoboism. There are lots more factors but I'll stop there, because this is Hobology 101, remember?

CULTURE
After all this reading, I learned that there is a whole set of words and symbols (hoboglyphs?) utilized by hobos to warn each other of danger and guide others in a safe path. Once I saw those symbols, I was reminded of some writing I'd seen a couple years ago on a train trestle here in Binghamton. Proof of hobos right here in Binghamton?? That was IT- I needed to go on a hobo safari.

TODAY'S HOBO SAFARI
Again, please do not fault this amateur hobologist. I am honestly curious about this whole sub-culture that seems uniquely American and has been the subject of lots of scholarly books and studies, believe it or not. Since many things in Binghamton seem frozen in the 1950s, or earlier, I figured there was a decent chance we might find some remnants of hobo life at our local train tracks (commercial trains still run through here regularly, but passenger service stopped in about 1961). Mostly, I was looking for markings, like the "LAPD broke my nose" warning I'd found two summers ago.

Unfortunately, we didn't seem to find much in the way of hobo markings, but we are certainly not trained to know where to look. Mostly we found graffiti, which seemed very vulgar and not at all clever like the code I'd read about. That said, some of the graffiti seemed to take on new meaning, when considered from the perspective of possible hobo communication. For example, this stick-figure drawing of a fight- does that mean "this is a city where you will get beaten up?" Because that seems to describe Binghamton. It is very blue-collar/immigrant/working class, and I would bet not-at-all hobo-friendly. Ever.

We did find a bit of hobobilia, I think- a couple pairs of discarded work boots under one of the trestles.

SOURCES
By now, you are asking where I got all this information. Obviously, I started on the internet (with wikipedia, as usual) but the internet seemed to just scratch the surface. Not surprisingly, hoboism is one of those subjects that doesn't get fully translated to the internet, since there is not much crossover between people who are tech-savvy and also knowledgeable about the subject.

I tried our local Barnes & Noble. Yup, marched right up to the kid at the customer service desk and said, "The key word is 'hobo.'" Not surprisingly, our "hobo" section is non-existent.

So I was forced to mine the NY Times database from the past 125 years. This was much more interesting, and I learned there was a Hobo College founded in Chicago and also New York in the early 20th century, there is a National Hobo Convention each year in Britt, Iowa, since 1900, the last of the great hobos seem to have died out in very recent years, as evidenced by the fact that some earned a legit obituary in the NY Times!

THE LESSON LEARNED
So, class, if you have learned one thing from reading this, it is that "hobo" is not necessarily a derogatory term, and is not a synonym for "homeless." Rather, a "hobo" is a person who wanders the country in search of temporary work, and typically uses trains as the preferred mode of transportation. A "gentleman of the rails," if you will.

P.S. I asked my husband what he thought of when I said the word. His first recollection was his 6th birthday party, for which the theme was apparently . . . hobos! (See, I married the right guy for me.) All the little kids apparently came dressed up in tattered clothes, with smudged faces to look like facial hair, and his mom gave each kid a "bindle stick" with a bandana full of treats on the end. Cute, huh?

"Neon Cruise" through L.A.'s Chinatown

2008-07-10T20:55:00.010-04:00

Given that the approximately 80% of my blog readers were also present on the Museum of Neon Art's "Neon Cruise" tour we did when we visited LA over 4th of July weekend, I won't go into excruciating detail on this one.

I just wanted to post a few of John's fun photos from the Chinatown stop. For the three of you readers (hi Gerard! hi Carrie!) who were not in attendance, the "cruise" consists of a double-decker open-air bus that starts at the Museum (4th Street, between Spring and Main) in Downtown LA and goes to Chinatown, then the looooong way to Hollywood, then to West Hollywood/Fairfax, and the home stretch back downtown via the Miracle Mile/Wilshire Boulevard.

The entire cruise was incredible- highly recommended for all ages (just remember to bring a sweater and maybe a baseball hat- it gets windy!) The highlight, for me, was Chinatown, because many of the neon lights in these photos had been dark since probably World War II and had just been restored and lit a couple weeks ago. The result is . . . well, you can see for yourself. Cool, huh?

What the ???

2008-06-29T20:28:00.010-04:00

By way of background, and this is incomprehensible to my West Coast readers, THERE ARE NO FROZEN YOGURT SHOPS IN BINGHAMTON. In fact, there are none for a good 50-miles, I believe (I'm assuming there must be one in Syracuse or Scranton). No, I do not know how I have survived 2 1/2 years without my favorite frozen treat, so you can imagine how excited I was when I saw that a yogurt shop had opened recently near the University. I would link to the website, or to any reference to it on the big, huge internet but - not surprisingly- I find none.

The place- Cafe Prince- is owned by the same people who own the Korean restaurant next door, and sells that tasty/funky Pinkberry-style fro-yo.

Still, you ask, what does this have to do with those nasty photos? You see, Cafe Prince is housed in a former bagel shop, so they decided it was a good idea to keep the fine Port-O-Bagel (I couldn't make that up, that is what the place was called) decor. Yes, those are fake flowers stuck into incredibly stale bagels, and partially covered up with coffee beans. Yeah, because styrofoam is so expensive?

How much would YOU pay?

2008-06-22T13:21:00.007-04:00

What is this, you ask? Or maybe you already had an answer in your head (it's not that, you sicko!) We went to NYC yesterday, to take in a bunch of photography shows, including a huge retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (a.k.a. The Met, for my West coast friends). We were not expecting the bonus treat, however, of seeing more of Jeff Koons' crazy metal "balloon dog" sculptures on the rooftoop garden.

I say "more" because these wacky things seem to be following us around the world, or vice versa. Question: how many 15-foot-tall metallic fruity-colored balloon sculptures have you seen lately? Well, we've somehow stumbled across three such installations in the past year-and-a-half.

We'd never heard of nor seen these things until last year, when we were cruising down the Grand Canal in Venice, innocently enough, and then THIS thing smacked us in the face. So surreal, to see this hot pink carnival-looking thing, set outside a staid Venitian palazzo. It really made an impact (this photo hangs in my office now, in fact). Bonus points for public installations of contemporary art!

So I did a little research when we got home (I know, shocking!) and it turns out that these puppies (ha! punny!) go for . . . wait for it . . . OVER $20 MILLION! Wow. They are cool and all but seriously, that is quite a chunk of change. Now that these balloon things were on our radar, we made sure to catch the "balloon flower" in Berlin this year. Not nearly as cool as the Venice dog, I have to say.

So who is Jeff Koons? Surely someone who commands such huge sums for his work, and whose name is familiar to so many, must be long-dead, right? Nope. Turns out that Mr. $23.5 Million Silly Flower is only in his 50s. Not only that, but he actually used to be married to that Porn-Star-Turned-Member-of-the-Italian-Parliament, back in the 1990s, so he obviously pulls chicks. Seriously, I want to party with this guy.

Now, they are substantial pieces of work. And they must take a lot to produce- much more costly materials than oil paints and canvas, to be sure, but it turns out that Mr. Koons might not exactly be sitting in his studio polishing these things himself- he actually oversees a studio that employs 30 technicians who actually produce these works. I am not saying he's not the "real" artist here, I'm just raising the point that maybe our local girl 4-year-old artist, Marla, shouldn't have gotten such a hard time for (possibly) getting some coaching or direction on her painting from her dad. But I digress . . .

Mr. Goofy Dog is also the artist behind that uber-famous living-flower-covered piece called "Puppy" that graced the opening of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain in 1997. This guy really gets around!

We also stopped in to the Neue Galerie, near The Met, to catch the last few days of the Gustav Klimt exhibit. You might recall that this Klimt painting, of a Jewish Austrian businessman's wife, was seized by the Nazis in 1938, sold at auction in 1942 to a Viennese gallery, then reclaimed by the heirs in 2006 and sold at auction in Los Angeles for . . . $135 million! I used to think that was a lot of money for a piece of art, but now I see that it would only get me a cool-looking heart, a doggie, and maybe some flowers like these. I guess it's time to recalibrate the mental assessment of what "a lot of money" is, eh?

Here are some more photos of the rooftop Koons balloon dog at The Met, just cuz they are so cool-looking (and FREE!):

The 5 Phases of Facebook: A Love Story

2008-06-20T21:27:00.007-04:00

As my last blog entry indicates, I have been a bit- OK, a LOT- distracted by Facebook lately. If you have been living under a rock or in Binghamton, NY, Facebook (FB) is a social networking site that is definitely for grown-ups and can be used for professional purposes, but has just enough bells and whistles to constitute quasi-"entertainment." I am far enough into the trajectory that I can start to see the phases of the FB love affair, which are:

Phase I: Skepticism

For about a year, I was consistently receiving emails from all sorts of people, asking me to join FB or, once I created a basic profile account, to be my "friend." Figuring that this "Facebook" thing was yet another passing online social trend, I found 100% of these 50-or-so contacts to be annoying, but I politely obliged.

So there I sat, with my 50 "friends" who occasionally did inexplicable things like "(insert name of random person here) has challenged you to a game of Mob Wars." or "(so and so) wants you to rate their personality." Hmmm, perhaps this FB thing is more like MySpace than LinkedIn? Either way, I'm DEFINITELY not taking any part in THIS "fun."

Phase II: Fear

At some point, I figured out that my every move on FB was being broadcast to the rest of my FB network (and possibly to the world?) Not sure the reach of this accidental broadcast stream, but I quickly discovered, and made friends with, the FB "privacy" settings. No matter. The damage was done: I had been spooked and it would take me months to jump back on the FB horse. Even side-saddle.

Phase III: Excitement

Around April, John started reconnecting with a crazy assortment of people from high school. Apparently, someone from his class had started recruiting classmates to get on FB, and the party was ON. And THAT sounded like a party I wanted to attend.

I logged into my dusty account- did I even have a profile photo at that point?- and took FB for a spin. Hey! Isn't that the nice kid who sat next to me in World History in 10th grade? "Friend" him, I will! Former Speaker of the California Assembly? Super nice guy I sat next to one time at a a dinner party in 2004? I friend you!

On this exuberant friending spree, I dug deep (a bit too deep) and doubled my friends network within a few days. I wasn't trying to prove anything (or was I?) I just got excited to see so many long-lost faces staring back at me, just an "Add as Friend" click away.

Phase III-A: Evangelism

I am adding this as a sub-phase because I realize that not every FB-lover will experience it. FB makes it really easy to invite the people in your email contacts, and my personality dictates that OF COURSE I wanted more people to come to my FB party. Former colleague from 4 years ago? All the girls in my high school crew? I sent them corny FB invitation emails like, "Jump on in- the water's great!" What a DORK. Not surprisingly, not a ton of success with this effort. I think I reeked of desperation. No matter. When they finally overcome Phase I, they'll thank me for planting the seed, right?

To facilitate all my peeps finding each other, without having to do it all myself on an individual basis, I started FB groups for my High School, College and Business School classes. That way, when someone new flies into the FB net, they will most likely find their way to one of these groups, where I can easily farm them for my own network.

The combination of Phase III and III-A led to a very motley and incongruous collection of FB friends. Crap. Now I was in trouble. Time to prune the list (this is about the time I learned the term "de-friend," which is now my Favorite Word of the Month- subtle and yet so insulting, all at the same time.)

Given that I was spooked by FB's tendencies to broadcast your activity (see Phase II), how do I get rid of some of these people I added in my over-friending spree? without committing a breach of netiquette? If I de-friend you, are you going to know it? Crisis. Research was in order. Which led me to . . .

Phase IV: Obsession

It started out innocently enough: I wanted to learn a bit more about the culture, custom and etiquette of FB before going further. I had about 140 FB friends (shall we come up with a new word, to try to distinguish from my actual friends? Nah, that line is getting blurrier by the day, so why split hairs now?)

Apparently I was not the first to have burning questions about how a polite person should conduct themselves on FB. This woman in England has an entire blog devoted to it. After a couple weeks of online research, and urgent emails to some of my loyal blog readers (hi Jonelle!), I felt comfortable navigating and adding to my new FB life. I even decided against pruning my burgeoning FB network. For now, at least.

This phase seems to be the most protracted. FB has so many facets, not to mention all the people you haven't talked to since high school and have to catch up with, that the Obsession phase can last for . . . not sure yet, sorry to say.

I can report that I am mostly "over" seeing the old high school chums on FB, although that has been really fun. But how come my high school isn't listed? nor my college? Not to worry, classmates, I am currently in communication with FB officials about getting CMC and RHHS added (not joking). Perhaps I am in a Phase IV ripple, as I most recently find myself obsessed with FB as a movement (it is the sixth most heavily trafficked website now?) and even-gasp!- wanting to learn about the technology-geek aspects. What makes my new best-friend tick?

Phase V: Balance

I will not pretend I am personally familiar with this phase, but I can imagine that it must exist. Actually, that might not be true, since I have yet to meet anyone who has attained it. Perhaps that is because the bulk of my communication lately has been on FB, with other FB-lovers.

At the rate I am going (my new fascination is with "status updates" and that could take me weeks to work through!), I will not achieve the sought-after Balance phase any time soon. It will likely be evidenced by more regular blogging, about things that are not FB-related, which is inconceivable to me at present.

And last night I enabled FB mobile so I can twitter status updates from my cell phone . . . uh-oh.

Mr. Chair

2008-06-14T17:38:00.003-04:00

What in the world is going on in this photo that is inspiring a blog, you ask? Here's the deal: While I try not to blog about specific people, sometimes, one just jumps out you, and you can't help but make fun. Like who can forget The Guy.

So today we were at the Irish Festival, and John sees a guy who looks familiar (that would be the dark haired guy with glasses, seated at center). John can't place him at first, but then sees him walking around the Festival, carrying that wicker-ish patio chair you see in the photo.

A-HA! The chair put it all into context- this guy, we'll call him Mr. Chair, had come to one of John's drumming classes at a lady's house- and he brought with him . . . The Chair. John didn't make much of it, at the time, but seeing the guy now schlepping around this cumbersome chair at a big, crowded, rainy festival, and NOT SITTING IN IT, was just too weird. It was like a security blanket. And you KNOW I begged John to let me go sit in it, if not move it away while they weren't looking.

I know, I know, you are saying I'm cruel and lack sympathy, that it is for his wife's (unknown) medical condition (she is not in the photo, but looked healthy to us). But if she needs to sit down, can't she get a folding chair? or one of those tripod stools that people bring to watch golf tournaments? This was a piece of high quality patio furniture. And it is clunky. Believe me, there was nothing so cool about the Irish Festival that would make it worth the hassle of dragging around 25 pounds of . . . chair. We'll keep our eye out for Mr. Chair now, though. It's a small town. Maybe we'll see him at the gym. With his chair.

LAOH? That would be the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, of course!

2008-06-14T16:29:00.010-04:00

Last week, we received some serendipitous misdirected mail (to the prior occupant) from the "LAOH." I am not on a first-name basis with LAOH, so I had to open it to find out that it referred to the local chapter of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians (i.e., an Irish-Catholic fraternal organization). As if they had known of my love for kitschy ethnic festivals, they wanted to announce their 2nd Annual Broome County Irish Festival. I was intrigued- we had gone to Ireland on our honeymoon, so we know the "real" Ireland- what the Upstate New York version be like? What do the New York Irish do for kicks on a rainy Saturday?

They Gamble: I don't know what it is with the gambling around here, but it seems that every event we go to has a "50/50" raffle where people buy tickets and they pay out 50% of the money as a prize, keeping the rest for the charity du jour.

They Eat: Thankfully, the American version of Irish food was corned beef & cabbage, and shepherd's pie, and not McDonald's (I had feared this, truly).

They Dance: It was actually very cool to watch the young girls with curly bouncy hair do their Irish folk dancing. I was telling John that I hadn't seen that kind of dancing before. That is, until I realized that it was the same thing as . . . RIVERDANCE. Ugh. I now have yet another reason to hate Riverdance- they ruined this otherwise cool ethnic dancing for me.

They Sweat: Despite the rain (which I thought was appropriate, given that it was an Irish festival), there was plenty of sweating going on.

The festival program was very helpful, indeed. It indicates that LAOH (we're buds now, so I like to call them LAOH) is hosting the "5th Annual Half-Way to St. Patrick's Day Hooley" on September 12, 2008 at the KoC (that is Knights of Columbus, for all of you under 60 years old and/or those of you who have never lived more than 30 miles inland from either coast.) Apparently, they cannot wait an entire year for that blessed day so they have to do it semi-annually. Good that the advertisement reads "No alcohol under 21" (lest people assume that Irish drinking laws - i.e., none- apply at the KoC that crazy night). They are also going to have a "Chinese auction" (huh?) I'm intrigued, on so many levels. See you at the hooley!!!

Confession: I'm cheating on you . . .

2008-06-08T17:17:00.002-04:00

I'm cheating on my blog . . . with FACEBOOK. I admit it- the hugely popular social networking site has sucked me in, and siphoned off all my spare computer time since last weekend. So I decided to blog about my recent online passion.

I'd had a very basic profile on Facebook (no photos or anything) for about a year, and kept getting "friended," so I had about 50 "friends," but it was not until my husband jumped aboard that I started to get really interested. A couple weeks ago, I realized he was finding all sorts of old friends from high school and having fun email exchanges with the ghosts of classmates and acquaintances past. So I decided to investigate it for myself. And BOY, am I addicted.

Here's why I was resistant to Facebook (or "FB" as I call it now, since we are so intimate lately):

1. I thought it was "for the kids." I had somehow got into my head that FB was something akin to MySpace, i.e., a huge time-suck where teenagers (and those who want to act like teenagers) create some weird online persona and strive to acquire "friends" by the boatload, or promote their singing career. There is certainly a place for MySpace, but not in MYWorld.

2. I thought it was another boring business networking site. (I realize that this inconsistent with #1.) Because I was getting "friended" by grown-ups and business associates, I thought it was like Linked In or one of those really dull/flat business-oriented websites.

3. I don't need more online distractions. 'Nuff said.

4. I don't want to learn how to use any new technology. This reason is just plain lame. I'm not 90 years old. And if the technology is useful and cool (as FB is), it is well worth investing a few days to get myself up to speed. Done.

Why I am an enthusiastic convert to FB:

1. The ability to find people (long-lost or close-by) quickly and efficiently. FB allows you to search "networks," so I was able to search my high school and college class years and come up with a list of people that was essentially like looking at a yearbook, but with updated faces and the ability to reach out and touch them immediately. Amazing!Once I started poking around, I was encouraged when I immediately found a long-lost high school friend- the guy who won "Class Clown" with me! Turns out, we'd both been trying to reconnect for 15 years, but it took just a few minutes on FB, and I wasn't even looking for him! Nothing like a trip to Clowndom to lift one's spirits - it was like we hand't missed a beat.

2. The ability to readily cyber-stalk in a socially acceptable way. Another great feature is that you can search other people's "friends" lists. So you can basically find a specific person, then poke around in their online Rolodex. How powerful is that? I actually told John that, despite the stupid amount of time I've spent on FB in the past week, I rationalized that it was actually a time saver, since I'm able to find and get updates on all kinds of random people so easily. I know, I have a "problem." But one article I read about FB said this was perfectly acceptable to do. In fact, it said "Stalk like it was your job."

3. Keeping connected to people who are far away. Since most of my friends and family are in Los Angeles, it is really fun to log on and be greeted with photos of people's kids and travels and lives. I also love a feature called "Status" which, like "twitter," is essentially a micro-blog that answers the question "what are you doing right now." I know it sounds crazy, but it's fun to see my FB "news feed" full of entries like "Marie is considering a latte" and "Eric is hungry" and "Tara loved seeing XYZ band play at XYZ club last night" and "Allison changed her name!" Such insignificant details are really intimate and make me feel much closer to these people, in a weird way that I hadn't expected.

FB is not for everyone:

FB takes a little getting used to. If you are not willing to invest the time to figure out how it works (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) you should probably not venture on there. Otherwise you will inadvertently be sending out all sorts of communications you had not intended. Luckily, there are others out there who are even more obsessed with FB, such as this woman who has devoted an entire blog to FB etiquette.

Building the FB army:

If you are reading this and I haven't "friended" you or invited you to FB, it's probably because I think you have not discovered the magic of FB for yourself, and will think I'm pathetic (just as I had regarded those who were "friending" me over the last year!) If you are not on FB, get on there, quick! And "friend" me, dammit- I miss you! That said, I'm already plotting my exit strategy on some over-friending I did in my initial exuberance- the Great Facebook Friend Purge of 2008? Sounds like a blog entry!

Where are all the trashy magazines?

2008-05-31T22:15:00.000-04:00

When my parents came to visit last month, we took them to the (People's Republic of) Ithaca and I stopped in to the local food cooperative (you know, where you pick up your henna, hemp and "fair trade" bananas. Not only did they not have (corporate, highly processed and artificially flavored) Diet Coke, but - insult of insults- they had NO TRASHY MAGAZINES for me to peruse at the checkout.

Honestly, what is the point of going to the store if I can't see what's up with Britney Spears? "Gluten Free Living"??? Ha! Some substitute that is. "Veg News"?? Those mags were a major BUMMER. They made me feel even more guilty than looking at gossip rags.

The Jell-O Museum

2008-05-30T19:42:00.012-04:00

(This post is Part II to this one.)

What the heck is Jell-O, anyway?
Come along, dear reader, as we take a moment to investigate the roots of the magical treat that has been enjoyed by so many millions since its modern-era invention in 1897 by Pearle B. Wait in LeRoy, New York . . . Well, that's not really true. Gelatin had been around for at least a few hundred years. What the Jell-O guy did was invent the syrupy sweet flavoring to mask the taste of . . . YUK. Read on.

The Victorian era: Still boiling pig feet
I had thought that statements like "Jell-O is made from horse feet!" were merely schoolyard urban legends, but it turns out that gelatin is "a protein produced by partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted from the bones, connective tissues, organs, and some intestines of animals such as the domesticated cattle, and horses." Yup, the rumors are true. Prior to 1897, if you had a craving for some flavorless (unless you count "sinew" as a "flavor") goo, you had to boil animal nasties for many hours. This is why gelatin was a food enjoyed (if that is the word?) primarily by upper class people who had servants to perform this nasty process (involving scraping hair and skin off of these boiled bits) of collecting said goo. (Although I'm guessing our dear friend and Pilsbury Bake-Off winner, Mary O., is going to read this and tell me that she's made the stuff herself, probably while she was making water from scratch.)

Sugar to the rescue!
Further proving my blanket statement that "if you add enough sugar (or coat it with chocolate), you can make anything taste good!" And that is what the hero of our story, Pearle B. Wait, did in 1897: he came up with the great idea of masking the nasty natural flavor of gelatin with syrupy sweet flavors and putting the whole mess in a little paper box from which a modern housewife could enjoy an instant gelatinous treat.

Birthplace of Jell-O

Which brings us to LeRoy, NY and the Jell-O Museum, which we visited over Memorial Day Weekend. LeRoy, NY (a town of 5,000 souls not far outside of Rochester, yet, like Binghamton, an exercise in time travel back to 1952) was the proud home of the Jell-O factory. That is, of course, until it was shut down in 1964. As can be found in many Upstate NY rust-belt cities, a hulking mass of a manufacturing lingers on as a sort of tombstone to industries-past.

Jell-O Tourism?

The fact that the corporate parent is long gone does not prevent the ballsy little LeRoy Historical Society from milking Jell-O for all it is worth ("Open Every Day!") and slapping together a small, but interesting, collection of Jell-O history and memorabilia for freak-show tourists like me. The scary thing is that I've known about the Jell-O Museum since long before I moved to upstate NY. It must be on the same circuit with the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin (yup, been there, too!) The best thing about the museum is that it is home grown (check out the sweet "display" of Jell-O molds) and authentic, lacking the corporate polish of places like Hershey, Pennsylvania or even the Tabasco factory in the Middle of Nowhere, Louisiana.

"Jell-O" and "Mayonnaise": two ingredients that do not belong in the same recipe. Ever.
I could go on for miles about all the nasty Jell-O recipes that involve things like Lime or Lemon Jell-O plus [insert non sequitur ingredient here: canned imitation krab meat (in juice); radish; horseradish; cabbage; or the ever-popular mayonnaise]. Instead, I will thank the generation immediately preceding mine, which had the good sense to give the cold shoulder to emetic flavors like "Seasoned Tomato" and "Italian Salad" (what the heck does "Italian Salad" taste like?) Check out this list of discontinued flavors: pickle Jell-O, ladies?

Jell-O + Mormons: A Love Story

The Jell-O saga would not be complete without a little romance, and we can thank the Mormons for providing it here. It seems that Mormons harbor an inexplicable fondness for the gooey delight, consuming an average of 21 boxes per family, annually. Not only is it the Official Snack of the State of Utah, in fact- I could not make this up- the area of the United States most densely populated by Mormons is sometimes called . . . the "Jell-O Belt." You heard it here first!

Design House: NYC-style

2008-05-28T09:21:00.006-04:00

Last weekend, we went to NYC for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (essentially a huge trade show with the latest styles from all over the world). We also worked in something called the Kips Bay Decorator Show House (you probably know the drill: the design world takes over a swanky house, pimps it out in all manner of design, sells tickets to schmucks and wannabees like me, and raises money for some children's cause.)

Having been to several tasteful designer show houses in LA, we figured the one in NYC would be over-the-top classy. And (bonus!) we'd get to see how the other-half-lives on the Upper East Side. This year, however, was apparently the weakest in decades. Instead of taking over a 5-story Fifth Avenue manse, they did 6 (disorganized) apartments in one massive 1950 apartment block on 66th Street. It was still interesting, though. Check this out:
Army of Boston Terrier Death Masks

I am a lover of dogs, to be sure. I even like the scrunchy-faced kind (Hello, Daisy!) and yes, that includes Boston Terriers. What I cannot endorse, however, is this army of what can only be described as Boston Terrier Death Masks that filled the windowsill of one of the bedrooms on the house tour. One word: FUGLY.

Death Mask (Detail)

In case you cannot fully appreciate all that fugliness in the one photo, here is a detail for you. OUCH. Tough to look at, no? And what if this army is the first thing you see when you wake up and look out the window to greet the morning sun? Clearly these rooms were "for show purposes only" and had not been nightmare-tested.

Tin Can Alley

One thing that was very cool and memorable, though, was the treatment of this wall in one of the apartments- made of thousands of tin can lids, carefully and artfully nailed to the wall. It was really luminous and surprisingly peaceful. Like the death masks, also not user-tested.

Auction Tuxedoes

2008-05-28T09:05:00.004-04:00

As if on cue, our favorite country auction spits out this tremendous line of Owego Tuxedoes for hunting season '08. It's as if the fluorescent pieces were thrown in just to make certain that my eyeballs did not miss this entire rack of fabulosity.

NYC signage

2008-05-28T08:49:00.000-04:00

I must be attracted to WORDS, because man, do I notice signs when I travel. Forget the Southern Tier Signage that we know and love, I could spend all day walking around NYC just looking at the crazy signs everywhere. NYC is such a gateway for new immigrants, it really leads to some great typos and funny names. We recently saw a huge, permanent sign for the "Chinatwon Benevolent Lodge." BUMMER for Chinatwon. Then there are the ones that are just downright funny, like this one.

I'll have to keep a better eye out for this phenomenon. These are just a couple that caught my eye recently:

My New Skid Row Name: "Hot & Crusty"

Since 2005, I have been widely known as "Lil' Thick & Juicy" ("Lil'" because "Thick & Juicy" was already taken. By the prostitute that worked 3 porta-potties on Skid Row- 1 for her wardrobe, 1 for her "house" and 1 for her, ahem, "office," if you will.) But I've always felt overshadowed by her, so I think it's time I strike out on my own and get a new DBA.

I have been christened: HOT & CRUSTY!

What do Lucy & Desi, Kazoos, and Jell-O have in common?

2008-05-17T20:02:00.007-04:00

Sometimes my blog entries just write themselves. This is one of those . . .

John and I decided to make the most of Memorial Day weekend and take an impromptu trip to two of those glamorous upstate New York destinations . . . Buffalo and Rochester. Actually, I'd been curious about visiting both, but they have been mostly ice-bound for the past 6 to 8 months, so I've had them on-hold while the tundra defrosts. Even though we only have a couple of days, these cities aren't exactly beckoning the tourists so I've been wringing blood from a stone, trying to find stuff to do. My research paid off BIG TIME, though: I have found Americana kitsch gold, right here in Upstate NY. Who knew we had THESE cultural destinations at our doorstep?

Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz Center
Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, NY, which is apparently the best thing that happened in Jamestown since 1911. This town is doooooown on its luck, but it has latched on to hometown girl Lucy and started its own Lucy & Desi museum, no- let's call it a cultural center. No, this is not only a closet-sized room full of her old dresses and bad wigs. This is a serious mecca for people trapped in 1952 (which is not an insignificant percentage of the local population). Check out the online store- it has more items than the USC gift shop! You can even pick up some Vitameatavegamin or an I Love Lucy blender salt & pepper set? Seriously, take some time browsing in that online gift shop- its holdings are tremendous, I'm telling you.

In addition to an annual celebration of her birthday, Jamestown hosts the annual Lucy & Desi Days. This is a 3-day extravaganza of the most random crap- I cannot even tell you- you've just got to check out the endless schedule. But if someone can explain this one, I will give them $5- Why is Wilmer Valderrama the lead VIP guest for this event? Not only is the connection tenuous (apparently he's going to speak about how Desi Arnaz paved the way for Latino actors) but no one- NO ONE- in attendance is going to have a clue who Wilmer Valderrama is. PRICELESS.

As my mind was trying to make sense of this crazy Lucy & Desi Days thing, which is apparently a well-attended and organized event, I had epiphany that would explain everything- this is a draw for GAY guys! DUH! It's like if there was a gathering of Judy Garland fans, and they all came in Dorothy-drag, right? Nooooo, my friends, judging from the photos I can find, the only gay guys are the ones who might sneak in, unnoticed by the hordes of overweight seventy-somethings who prefer to time-travel back to the 1950s than live in Upstate's present rust-belt condition. Moving on . . .
The Kazoo Museum

One might think that the Kazoo Museum is the most bizarre museum you've ever heard of, but I can't possibly top the Lucy & Desi museum (oh wait, I can- read on). The Kazoo Museum in Eden, New York (about 30 minutes outside of Buffalo). Here's the short story, since I went nuts on Lucy & Desi- the metal Kazoo (yes, metal- we are splitting hairs in kazoo-land) was first manufactured in Eden, NY in 1916. This factory operated for decades until its father & son owner- apparently for lack of a grandson willing to strike out into the uncertain kazoo biz in the new millennium- gave (yes, gave- wouldn't be surprised if it was worth more as a tax write-off than a going business concern)- gave the business to Suburban Adult Services, Inc., which provides work for mentally and physically challenged individuals. Oh, and I'm guessing they probably also get free kazoos.

This blog got looooong, so we'll do fun with J-E-L-L-O in a Part II to this entry.

Just SWEET

2008-05-15T22:21:00.004-04:00

OK, I admit that I've been holding back on blogging about this photo because - prior hilarious posts aside- I am starting to feel guilty about making fun of hunters, because it seems that some of my (new) best friends come from strong hunter stock (who knew?)

Last month (yes, that would be APRIL, even though you still see lots of snow on the ground), we took a drive about 60 miles north to the neighboring Chenango County. With only 50,000 people, Chenango County is only 1/4 the size of our own county, which we think is really rural. But Broome County ain't nothin' compared to Chenango- MAN, we felt like city slickers! We saw dozens of deer, a huge flock(?) of wild turkeys (yes, WILD), and this gem of a picture. Please note that that is not a painted mural of a hunter aiming at birds in flight on the wall of that shed (or is it a house? I can't remember). Those are WOOD CUTOUTS. Gotta do sumpin' with that scroll saw, right?

The family that hunts together . . .

2008-05-15T22:18:00.005-04:00

I have written before about what we call the Owego Tuxedo, which consists of 2 or more pieces of camouflage attire, worn together (and named after the county seat of Tioga County, Owego). If any piece also sports fluorescent orange, that is a bonus, sort of the equivalent of tails. We often see Owego Tuxedo finery at the auction we regularly hit up for bargains (but not on crossbows- those fetch top dollar in that crowd.)

But I was a little surprised to see this entire family collectively decked out in probably the best Owego Tuxedo group-combo ever. Perhaps they wanted to hide because they didn't want their hunter friends to see them at the Verizon Wireless store at our awful local mall?

Guess what time it is??

2008-05-08T14:34:00.004-04:00

Peregrine falcon time! I have blogged about this a ton, so I'll just link to some old posts here, here and the best one: here.

Now that May is here, it's time for me to switch my computer's homepage to the Kodak Falcon Cam, with its eye trained on the extremely cute and fun to watch (I know, I know- my excitement level about this is indicative of the fact that I've lived here for over 2 years now) peregrine falcon nest up at the Kodak HQ in Rochester, NY.

Come along, kids!

Gotta love NYC

2008-05-07T18:40:00.002-04:00

$0.99 for a NEW one? Then how much is it for an OLD one? Jeez, what bargains you can get in the Big City!

My lunch today: not joking

2008-04-16T17:41:00.001-04:00

NYC: Public bathroom report from Bryant Park

2008-03-30T15:02:00.010-04:00

It is widely known that NYC underwent a massive clean-up, both substantively and image-wise, over the past 20 years or so. The 1970s, when the city teetered on the bring of bankruptcy and basically went into receivership, were the days of trash and hooker-strewn streets, where roaming packs of truant teenagers (no exaggeration) kept people fearfully locked inside their homes. No place was more emblematic of the city's problems than Times Square, full of sex shops, dirty movie houses, and drugs.

A block away from Times Square is a (now) lovely place called Bryant Park, adjacent to the main branch of the famous New York Public Library. In the Bad Old Days of NYC, it was basically an open air drug bazar and home to many, many, many homeless, drug addicts and hookers. Something like L.A.'s Pershing Square, but much nastier.

Today, Bryant Park is filled with cafe kiosks, great seating areas, gorgeous landscaping. It is even hosts events like New York Fashion Week, a holiday ice skating rink, and a great summer concert series. I knew it had cleaned up its image, but I was unprepared to find the foyer (yes, it has a real foyer) of this public bathroom building:

filled with fresh flowers worthy of - no, bigger than would be found at- the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

For more of my public potty reports, check here.

The Biddy Bus

2008-03-30T14:25:00.004-04:00

Upstate New York suffers from a very serious demographic problem: loss of the 18-34 year old population. Not only is the entire Upstate region losing population overall, it is especially acute in this coveted age bracket. And "professional" 18-34 year olds? Not so much sticking around the area. See, no matter how good the quality of life is around here- and it really IS good: excellent public schools, low crime rate, no traffic, plenty of parks and public amenities- educated young people want this little thing called GOOD JOBS, and that is where Upstate NY in the 21st century fails to deliver.

One of my many local jokes (which fails to slay 'em) is "Know what the best thing about being 30-something and professional in Binghamton is? NO peer pressure! Get it? Ha ha ha ha ha!!!"

All this is backdrop for the sad (for me) story I am about to relate. So I went to NYC on another day trip yesterday, courtesy of a local travel company that arranges bus trips from Binghamton to places like the big outlet mall across the border in Pennsylvania, the big Indian casino in the region, the annual flower show in Philly, etc. You can imagine that the bus is filled with mostly women (who, like me, don't want to drive) and they are mostly, well, "older."

I am such a "regular" that they have started seating me in the front row. This is not a status I am proud of. While normally I love to be an insider and know the people who own and operate a business, since it usually means perks, this is not a business where I would proudly hold VIP status.

We were getting ready to leave NYC yesterday, waiting for the stragglers as 7 pm approached, and from my front row perch I see a nicely dressed, professional-looking young man pop his head in and have the following exchange with the bus driver:

Cute yuppy guy: "Is this the bus to Binghamton?"
Driver: "Well, yes, but it's a private bus."
Cute yuppy guy: "Yes, I know. You see, my grandmother is on this bus and she is a bit slow making her way to the bus. She's coming- please do not leave without her."

NO, yuppy guy! Please! Come on the bus with ME and live the Upstate dream with us! All those hopes, dashed as fast as they arose. The Biddy Bus took on its last passenger (after securely stowing her wheel chair in the luggage compartment) and the grannies and I made the long trek back "home."

Wich is Wurst?

2008-03-26T23:19:00.006-04:00

When you walk into a grocery store and go to the aisle titled "WURST":

I guess you shouldn't really be surprised when you find a box-o-tongues there:

Yep, those Germans, gotta have ready access to tongue at all times. This bucket full of laminated tongues greeted me at the local mini-mart near our hotel in Berlin. Funny, after being blind-sided by the stomach/colon/feces sausage at the charming French bistro, I somehow felt a new appreciation for tongue- at least it immediately declares itself and visually repulses, and won't stand a chance of sneaking its way onto my plate for $30!

"Ich habe diarrhoea" and other useful German phrases

2008-03-26T22:12:00.004-04:00

For as long as I've been traveling on my own, the first I thing I do when planning a trip abroad is go out and buy the applicable Fodor's travel guidebook. I probably picked this habit up from my mom, which I finally realized (it only took me 15 years) means that Fodor's is a bit boring. You know, it's your mom's travel guide.

I was über-excited about the Berlin piece of our trip, since it's a really edgy, transitional place with a strong counter-culture; we definitely wanted to explore outside the bounds of the traditional Fodor's territory. A friend recommended I use the Lonely Planet guidebook for Berlin, which turned out to be great advice, since it led us to the funky, young-people stuff we were craving there. I'd never used Lonely Planet before, but it seemed to be aimed at younger travelers, backpackers, and more adventurous and open-minded people who want to explore beyond the traditional tourist fare.

A great book until, that is, I tried to use the mini-language guide in the back. That is where I realized that the target Lonely Planet audience and the target Fodor's audience apparently have little in common. Aye, aye, aye!

NORMAL GUIDEBOOKS
My Fodor's French mini-language guide filled about 10 pages, divided into predictable subsections like "Numbers," "Colors," "Dining Out" and "Useful Phrases."

LONELY PLANET
John had done so well polishing off his rusty French and getting us through some key situations in Paris, I felt compelled to at least try and pretend I had some German skills. I mean, I look German, right? And I'm pretty good at faking accents, so I figured I might be able to conjure up something from those 6 weeks of "Intro to Foreign Language" German I took in 8th grade. Plus, I could refer to the handy mini-language guide that was certain to be at the back of my guidebook, nein?

The Lonely Planet language guide is a whopping 3 1/2 pages. It includes NONE of the above-referenced handy subsections found in Fodor's. It literally does not include basics like "Where is the bathroom?" or even "Excuse me." Was? Instead, I felt my "Those crazy kids today!" generation-gap grow by leaps when I read the following phrases from these random categories:

Phones & Mobiles:
"Ich hätte gern ein Ladegerät für mein Handy."
I'd like a cell phone for hire.

Internet:
"Ich möchte meine E-Mails checken."
I'd like to check my email.

Symptoms (huh??):
"Ich habe diarrhoea."
[You guessed it . . . ]

But the best phrase, the one that Lonely Planet apparently feels is more important to its readers than "Where is the bathroom?" is this one, from the Going Out category:
"Wo sind die Schwulen und Lesbenkneipen?"
Where are the gay venues?

FABULOUS. Very useful for me, thank you. Hopefully the gays in the clubs speak English, because I ain't gonna be able to ask them where the bathroom is!!

Andouillette AAAAA: "not a party pleaser"

2008-03-24T20:20:00.007-04:00

We returned from our Paris/Berlin trip last night (it was fab, thanks for asking) and I have to report on the run-in we had with a little bit of nasty food while abroad. I had recently written about how I was diligently researching German sausages, to make sure we avoided the "brain-wurst" or whatever macabre pig-bits might pass for "food" there, but it did not occur to me that France also suffers from bad judgment in the "what is acceptable to ingest" department. Here's the deal:

After a busy day of sightseeing, it was approaching the late-lunch hour and we were starving. So hungry we could "eat a horse"? Not exactly. I would rather have eaten a horse than what we did end up eating. We found a darling, bustling bistro- I mean really, damn cute, and Art Nouveau, to boot. We scoured the menu (written only in French). I was apprehensive and told John, "I'm not picky but I'm also starving, and I just don't want a plate full of stomach sausage or something completely inedible." John, in his unfailingly positive and generous manner, responded (words to the effect of): "We are going to order the best we can and we are going to eat what we get. If you don't like yours, you can share mine."

John ordered for us (in French, since there was definitely NO English spoken at this joint) something called "Andouillette AAAAA." With all those "A"s after it, it had to be extra good, right? And the word sounded familiar to John, like something he had eaten before with his French buddies in LA. He thought it was going to be (at least the "first cousin of") "andouille" - the spicy sausage found in gumbo and jambalaya.

Long story short: A plate of "Andouilllette AAAAA" plopped in front of me and I cut into the sausage casing. What happened next should never happen to anyone, ever: the sausage innards literally flopped out! And they were not normal sausage innards, either: they looked more like a rubbery seafood substance, not finely chopped meat normally found in sausage. No, my friend, this was not striated muscle tissue. This was smooth muscle. Parts of an animal that this city girl could definitely not identify by appearance, much less by taste.

The taste? Well, let's just say the smell was very strong, and the taste was- for better or worse (WORSE) - the strongest I've ever tasted. It was like chewing on rubbery . . . poop. There, I said it. Turns out, this was the dreaded "stomach sausage" of my pre-trip nightmares, right there in a steaming pile in front of me, next to some superb pommes frites and a lovely salad.

I ate about 40% of it before my gag reflex really starting building up, so I passed it off to John to take it for the home stretch. I'm glad I went first, because watching him choke down that chewy nastiness, and personally knowing how gnarly it was, made my stomach ache even more.

Given that we had a belly full of it, we didn't really want to talk about it too much, but we pretty much convinced ourselves that we had just eaten "snout" or "ears" - something non-traditional yet not emetic. We joked that the "AAAAA" meant "extra snouty." Turns out that Andouillette (I still don't know the meaning of the "AAAAA") is made from the worst possible stuff: pig or cow stomach and colon, which may or may not still include the above-referenced POOP. Not joking. Take a read of the Wikipedia entry for our beloved "Andouillette" and count how many times the word "feces" is used in the short, descriptive paragraph there. Yup, count 'em FIVE "feces" references.

Elsewhere on the web, I found a few other blog posts about people's personal experiences with the stuff. One website understated andouillette as "definitely not a party pleaser" and another chef said that, in 40 years of trying, he's only been able to convert 2 people to the unique taste . . . of poop.

Andouillette is a real delicacy in a certain region of France; it's what French farm people eat because its made from the stuff that they can't sell to discriminating buyers like you and me. You know, people who prefer not to dine on pig sphincters. As my mom says, farmers (around the world) eat "everything but the oink" and it seems that France is no exception.

p.s. John later realized that he actually HAD eaten this poop sausage before - in Los Angeles with a bunch of Frenchies, one of whom had smuggled some andouillette back (stuffed in his socks, where the taste undoubtedly mellowed). The stuff was practically rotten by the time the group huddled around the skillet and- snickering as if on a dare- watched it turn from gray/green back to the color of . . . poop. Rest assured, there is not enough butter on this planet to make it tasty.