More Dirt Pudding, Please

Monday, November 24, 2014

Was that Grandpa Alan nimbly playing Frisbee in the PS 199 playground yesterday with 6 3/4 year old Boaz?

 

A search of the New York Times online archives shows that foshizzle almost always appears in that newspaper in reporting conversation, including a famous commercial featuring Snoop Dogg, for Chrysler automobiles. http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection&region=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage

 

I made this inquiry because _ _ _ H (A or I) Z Z L E was the best that I could do on Saturday's crossword to answer 1 Across, “Dated agreement?”  Even consulting America’s Favorite Epidemiologist and Professor David, in residence for the weekend, did not help me.  According to www.urbandictionary.com, fo shizzle or fo’shizzle usually appears as fo’shizzle my nizzle, a phrase that, once translated, would not be allowed in the New York Times for any purpose.   

It seems that FOSHIZZLE was also 1 Across in a diagramless puzzle published by the Times on April 20 , 2014, a format that I skip.  It evoked some controversy, causing Will Shortz, the legendary crosswords editor to write, “It’s true that it’s dated language.  But then so are HEP, RAD, EGAD, and other old-fashioned terms, which appear in crosswords all the time.”  It’s not the supposed antiquity (allegedly harkening all the way back to the 90s) that bothers me, it’s the obscurity.  I am not now and have never been a member of an organization where fo’shizzle (with or without the nizzle) has ever been uttered or used in any fashion and I intend to keep it that way.  

 

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The British government released a report today on the murder of a soldier in London by two domestic terrorists last year.  It pointed to a series of mistakes by its spy agencies in following up on the two men, who supposedly appeared in seven different clandestine investigations.  Also unsettling was the parliamentary committee’s criticism of an unnamed American technology company for failing to report online threats made by one of the men, threats that led the company to disable several of his accounts because of their contents.  The report said that “this company does not appear to regard itself as under any obligation to ensure that its systems identify such exchanges, or to take action or notify the authorities when its communications services appear to be used by terrorists.”  

It’s a delicate balance between protecting us from terrorist activity versus the shrinking of our freedom to be left alone.  While many of our citizens appear willing to allow the NSA access to our private communications, shall we privatize this intrusiveness as well, urging Google or Time Warner Cable or Facebook to stand guard over our prattling?  

 

Thursday, November 27, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!  Obviously, I stayed far away from the courthouse and Chinatown today in order to celebrate the holiday with family and friends, and particularly to enjoy the culinary skills of America's Favorite Epidemiologist.  While waiting for the festivities to begin, I had time to catch up with yesterday's food section of the New York Times and found some wonderful reading.  First, there was a wise article about how to be a good guest for Thanksgiving, or other major meal-oriented occasion, with an eye upon being asked back in the future.  My favorite quote came from Professor Denis Gainty, of Georgia State University.  “It’s so important not to give any kind of advice on anything,  You need to be the cheerleader for the food that’s being produced by the host.  I have lots of opinions about brining, but I realize I need to steer the conversation to safer topics, like religion and homosexuality.” 

Appealing to my quantitative side was an analysis of popular Thanksgiving dishes. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/11/18/dining/thanksgiving-recipes-across-the-united-states.html?ref=dining

Google analyzed web searches for recipes in the last decade during Thanksgiving week by state, excluding turkey itself.  Then, it reported those dishes in each state that produced more inquiries than their national average.  Specifically, New Yorkers asked about stuffed artichokes 5 times more than the country as a whole, the top item in New York.  Eye opening was the 189 times national average that North Dakotans sought a recipe for "cookie salad," or the 145 multiple in Hawaii for "pumpkin crunch."  

When I got bleary poring over the numbers, I was intrigued and happily puzzled by some of the dishes, with the Times listing the top 3 in each state.  I don't know how to explain Colorado's "frog eye salad" (also big in Idaho, Utah and Wyoming); Indiana's "dirt pudding" (in Ohio also, while West Virginia has "dirt cake"); Kentucky's "hot brown;" Louisiana's "ooey gooey bars;" Utah's "funeral potatoes;" and Hawaii's fascination with "jook."  

Good Meals Amid Bad News

Monday, November 17, 2014

Where were you on Saturday night?  I was sent back half a century while listening to the New York City Labor Chorus singing of a once proud labor union movement and a once vital civil rights movement.  Even after such a long time, the words (often quite simple and repetitive) of We Shall Not Be Moved, Which Side Are You On?, If I had a Hammer and We Shall Overcome were right back on my lips.  Now, unions are, at most, an afterthought in our economic system, and a smirking majority of the United States Supreme Court views racism as an historic relic, a relic that, with the obvious exception of Clarence Thomas, never seemed to have interested them before.

The 1,200 seat auditorium seemed full mostly of my contemporaries and our elders, with walkers and canes in abundance.  Were we the conscience of an increasingly-avaricious society or  merely a bunch of frustrated fools whose time has passed?

The lyrics of Which Side Are You On? always interested me.  It was written in 1931, in the course of a coal miners strike in a region that saw labor strife on and off for over 40 years.  

They say in Harlan County

There are no neutrals there;

You'll either be a union man,

Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

A contemporary version might unmelodiously go:

You'll either be a union man,

Or a thug, attorney, crisis manager, publicist, accountant, media consultant, lobbyist, or portfolio manager for J. H. Blair.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The terrible news from Israel this morning is the attack on worshipers in a Jerusalem synagogue by two Palestinians using a gun, knives and axes.  Four Jews were killed, including three Americans.  In order to empirically distinguish this act from anything resembling sanity, the synagogue is located in a section of West Jerusalem that has been occupied by Jews at least since 1948, and several kilometers from the nearest edge of Arab East Jerusalem.  I believe that any attempt to explain this act as anything but criminal insanity would itself be insane.  However, more disturbing to me is the caption under a photograph on the NYTimes web site: “Supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Gaza celebrated the attack on Tuesday.”  Tell me why such behavior doesn’t warrant harsh reprisal.  Demonstrating how patient, how rational, how peaceful, how tolerant we could be seems to accomplish little, if anything, in this conflict.  

By contrast, lunch was peaceful and joyful as I had dim sum at Jing Fong, 20 Elizabeth Street, with Fumiko and Stanley Feingold, and four CCNY classmates, as an extension of our periodic get togethers when Stanley visits New York.  We shared 18 plates of 15 items.  With a generous tip, it cost $14 per person.  It might have been less except for some uncontrolled Diet Coke guzzling (and you know who you are).  I wouldn’t want it repeated, but a couple of vegetable dishes were very good.  

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Boyz Club convened at 27 Sunshine Sea Food Restaurant, 46 Bowery, the former HSF.  This gave me the opportunity to compare two major dim sum joints back-to-back.  Jing Fong is enormous, running an entire city block from Elizabeth Street to the Bowery, one flight above street level.  27 Sunshine actually sits directly beneath, a half block long, entrance on the Bowery.  Jing Fong is vividly Chinese red, seemingly awaiting only acrobats and jugglers to complete the festive atmosphere.  27 Sunshine, befitting its name, is pastel yellow almost everywhere you look.  Jing Fong has a lot of Chinese patrons; 27 Sunshine has nothing but (our table aside).  Accordingly, it is a bit easier to understand or be understood at Jing Fong, assuming you haven’t mastered your Mandarin.

We had 9 guys at lunch and the food came and went so fast that I was unable to get a count on the number of dishes (and, unlike Jing Fong, the check wasn’t detailed).  We later estimated 30 plates, including duplicate items.  The bill for this was a staggering $85 upon which I heaped a very large tip, so that each of us owed $12.25.  Jing Fong had a slightly more interesting collection of items, but 27 Sunshine’s scallop dish almost drew a standing ovation.  On the way out, I sought to learn the origin of the name, 27 Sunshine Seafood Restaurant, located at 46 Bowery.  A managerial type patiently explained to me that 27 means 46 in Chinese, or I think that’s what he said.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Last night, I went to the Jewish Theological Seminary to hear Mike Kelly discuss his new book, The Bus on Jaffa Road, the story of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1996, killing 26.  Among the dead were Sara Duker and Matthew Eisenfeld, a young American couple.  Sara was a classmate and friend of Mayris’s children.  She died just a month after I met Mayris, so my early memories of our romance are combined with sad recollections of this tragic event.  Before the book talk, a study area of JTS’s library was dedicated to the memory of the young couple; Matt was a rabbinical student there.  

Four rabbis spoke at the dedication, two on behalf of JTS and two friends and classmates of Matt’s.  I didn’t take notes, but I tried to hold onto words and phrases that were repeated by various speakers about Sara and Matt.  I heard: hope – peace – love – Torah – learn – God’s image – giving – wisdom.  

Lunch today, although not with a crowd, was still special.  Jay Stanley, policy analyst for the ACLU based in Washington, was in New York for a periodic meeting.  Jay is the son of Charlotte Stanley, the flower of Cheshire County, New Hampshire, and John Langley Stanley, my graduate school roommate, taken from us far too early.  Jay, in his father’s footsteps, likes spicy, exotic foods, so we went to Xi’an Famous Foods, 67 Bayard Street, one of 5 Manhattan locations for this successful enterprise.  Since my last visit, the tiny space has been reconfigured to give a little more sitting room, but don’t expect to host the Cousins’ Club there anytime soon.  

We each ordered a spicy cumin lamb burger ($3.50) and then shared stewed oxtail noodles ($9.50) and buckwheat cold noodles ($5.25).  Each was spicy in its own wonderful way.  The noodles could only be eaten with your head inches above the place, to keep the delicious sauces nearer to your mouth than your clothing.  The hand-pulled oxtail noodles were very long and wide; the buckwheat noodles were like fat lo mein.  We were both delighted by the food quality.  Unfortunately, Jay had to rush back to an afternoon meeting, so he refused my suggestion that we stop at the Häagen-Dazs shop at the corner of Bayard Street and Mott Street, for, what I consider, the appropriate finish to a superior Chinese meal.   

Friday, November 21, 2014

For those of you who did not have the Washington Post delivered to your front door this morning, here is David Webber's valuable commentary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-h-webber-protecting-public-pension-investments/2014/11/20/85748ee6-66cb-11e4-836c-83bc4f26eb67_story.html

Tricentennial

Monday, November 10, 2014

The New York Times has again found a way to utilize the predominantly self-referential (and often self-reverential) data from Facebook to provide some interesting information.  It aggregates, by county, the “likes” for any college football team, to assess the level of interest in college football generally.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/upshot/the-places-in-america-where-college-football-means-the-most.html?ref=sports&_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

 

With Alabama leading the way, it pretty much correlates with where in the United States you don’t want to live.  “And the five counties in the United States with the lowest rates of college football fandom are the five boroughs of New York City.  Manhattan manages 2 percent, and the other four are all below 2 percent.”  There is an independent indication that it isn’t just the water locally.  Cook County (Chicago), Illinois also scrapes the bottom of the barrel, along with the counties surrounding Boston.  Significantly, these areas have an abundance of professional sports teams with passionate fans (present company included).  It’s likely, therefore, that we are willing to wait for the finished product before getting all aroused by the athletic accomplishments of our supposed student-athletes.  

 

As I wrote the other day, there have been two major changes to the Chinatown/Little Italy ecosystem, the first, Baz, a bagel joint on Grand Street, just a few feet off Mott Street.  More revolutionary is the appearance of Beijing Pop Kabob Restaurant, 122 Mulberry Street, right in the heart of Little Italy.  Until now, even as the borders of Little Italy shrank under the pressure of Chinese inflow, Mulberry Street remained intact and integral, Italian restaurant after Italian restaurant, interrupted only by T-shirt shops.  This, after all, is the home of the Feast of San Gennaro, held in mid-September each year to celebrate the patron saint of sausage and pepper sandwiches.  Held for more than 88 years, San Gennaro attracts under age drinkers from miles around. 

 

Now, a Chinese restaurant has replaced Positano Risorante, sitting right next to Buona Notte Ristorante.  You might as well be selling knishes in the Vatican.  Not only have the walls closed in on Little Italy, they have been breached by the Chinese hordes.  Fortuitously, Beijing Pop is also the 300th Chinese(ish) restaurant that I have patronized (and documented) since January 2010.  To remind you, I limit myself to weekday lunches in nearby Chinatown – not Flushing, not Sunset Park, not Upper East Side.  Admittedly, I have broadened the cuisine to all of East Asia, thereby including Japanese (10), Malaysian (5), Korean (2), Indonesian (1), Thai (4), Vietnamese (13).  India and Pakistan, and all of the Middle East, however, have been excluded from the count.  

 

I was joined on this special day by Stony Brook Steve.  There are 16 two tops, mostly pushed together, in this narrow joint, whose cream walls are decorated with Chinese scrolls and vivid wall hangings.  Respecting the restaurant's name, we ordered lamb kabobs and beef kabobs ($3.50 per order of 2 skewers), scallion pancake ($1.75), pan fried buns with beef curry ($3.75 for 3), and beef with tofu ($5.75) as a lunch special with rice and soup.  The food was quite good, on the whole.  The lamb was fatty, but lamb fat charred is still tasty.  The scallion pancake was small in diameter, but crisp,  greaseless and so inexpensive.  The three inch round buns were well-prepared, not doughy, but too mild for my taste.  Steve risked the tofu and found it edible.  

 

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

We have the day off in observance of Veteran’s Day (once Armistice Day), but I wasn’t idle.  I stopped off at my periodontist’s office, to help his children continue to acquire the finest private education available.  Then, I had lunch with the Feingold assembly, where Joe Berger, notable New York Times reporter, discussed his newly-published book, The Pious Ones: The World of Hasidim and Their Battles with America.  These very orthodox Jews challenge and embarrass me and most of the wishy-washy Jews of my acquaintance.  The challenge arises from the suspicion (or fear) that they are doing it The Right Way, that is, that their lives, their customs, their worship, their values represent authentic Judaism.  The embarrassment comes from viewing their lives, their customs, their worship, their values so at odds with the modern world.  

 

I put contemplation aside for the evening and went to Madison Square Garden to see the New York Rangers dominate the Pittsburgh Penguins, a fitting end to the holiday. 

 

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Today’s New York Times’ food section ruminates about Thanksgiving, two weeks away. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/dining/its-just-a-thanksgiving-dinner-fantasy.html?hpw&rref&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

The article contends that many of us harbor an aversion to the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for two reasons: the company and the menu.  I won’t touch the first subject.  For most of us, the Thanksgiving table is populated by the acorns off the family tree.  The selection process ended in the maternity ward.  I’m not going to challenge it now.

 

On the other hand, I love the Thanksgiving menu, the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potato concoction.  Aside from a good Passover seder, I can’t think of a meal at home that I anticipate more.  However, the Times describes the event as burdened with “unbending tradition, family expectations and dietary totalitarianism.”  It claims that, for Thanksgiving, Americans “want lobster. They want Alaskan king crab and West African peanut stew, Peking duck and pad thai, Neapolitan pizza and Brazilian feijoada. In some cases, they want any form of meat that doesn’t gobble: osso buco, rack of lamb, suckling pig.”  What’s wrong with this is that these items are best enjoyed in a restaurant, where you can expect practiced competency.  You never order turkey in a restaurant, because you ate it at home and your mother did it better.  

 

In contrast to the dishes rattled off by the Times, turkey is relatively easy to prepare, and the basic effort is the same regardless of the size of the crowd.  You need not visit out-of-the-way ethnic emporia or specialized provisioners to gather your ingredients.  Plus the wonderful leftovers.  Mother Ruth Gotthelf always purchased an oversized bird (recognizing her oversized sons undoubtedly) and made a wonderful potato salad to accompany the turkey for days afterwards.  My beloved Calvin Trillin has long advocated spaghetti carbonara as the national dish for Thanksgiving, but that is not even sufficient to separate me from my Pilgrim heritage.

 

Thursday, November 13, 2014

A diamond may be forever, but a name on a wall may be gone with a check book.  Lincoln Center announced today that Avery Fisher Hall, named for a wealthy audio equipment mogul over 40 years ago, was going to be renamed as part of a major fundraising campaign.  Following the advice that you have to spend money to make money, Lincoln Center is giving back $15 million to the Fisher family to free up the space over the doorway.  For its first dozen years, the building was called Philharmonic Hall.  Now, anything is possible.  Maybe downtown Louisville, Kentucky won’t mind us borrowing the name of the KFC Yum! Center from its multi-purpose sports arena.  Or, Sacramento, California may allow the NBA’s Sacramento Kings to revert to the ARCO Arena or the Power Balance Pavilion, so that New York can have the Sleep Train Arena.  Less bother would be involved with the use of KitKat Crescent, which lapsed as the home of the York City (England) Football Club in 2010.  On the other hand, I appreciate the swell of enthusiasm for Grandpa Alan’s Place, but I have to ask you to desist in promoting this choice.  

The Audio Visual Age

Monday, November 3, 2014

This morning’s New York Times has a special section listing the names of tens of thousands of New York City Marathon finishers.  The listings are ordered by time, not alphabetized like the New York State bar exam results.  That prevents me from applying my patented analytic tools to this collection of names.  My (ab)normal fascination with ethnicity is thwarted under these circumstances.   On the other hand, that furthers the American dream of judging each individual on her/his merits, removing bias from our perceptions.  It just isn’t as much fun as seeing how Us are doing against Them. 

New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio is poised to keep a campaign promise by permitting students to have cell phones in public schools.  He said that for parents it is “very, very important to know how to reach their kids.” He is not just talking through his hat, a device previously kept under wraps by a Korean startup telecommunications company.  He has a son in a public high school in Brooklyn.  Still, I’m thoroughly opposed to the idea.  

All of you over 40 went through high school without even touching a mobile telephone, no less carrying one as close as you keep your reproductive organs.  And, if your parents were concerned about reaching you, it was because of your sullen demeanor that you displayed at the dinner table and just about in any other public place in their company.  You hurt and disappointed them.  They just wanted to get a coherent sentence out of you in face-to-face conversation.  It would have been absurd to think that they actually wanted to talk to you on the telephone sometime between solid geometry and French. 

The psychology of today’s parents and children has not changed.  Cell phones in schools have nothing to do with parents, other than their inability to withstand teenage mewlings based on peer pressure.  Kids must have cell phones in order to talk to other kids at every waking moment, many of those moments otherwise inopportune, or, alternatively to avoid contact with the real world around them.  

I recognize the lure of the cell phone.  While I don’t bother with games, I compulsively peek at the New York Times, ESPN, the Weather Channel and that witty blog about eating in Chinatown.  Come on, Bill.  The kid’s not waiting to hear from you.  If his cell phone were limited to only receiving calls from Mom and Dad, it would quickly wind up in a dresser drawer with socks and underwear.  Stick to trying to govern the city, instead of the impossible task of controlling your teenage son.  Meanwhile, consider the plight of the teachers whose job is made more difficult by the audio and visual distractions offered by these devices.  “It didn’t sound like it, Mr. Goldfarb, but I was just looking up a good definition of iambic pentameter.”  

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Congratulations to the inmates.

Lan Larb Soho, Authentic Isan Thai, 227 Centre Street, replaced Saha Thai Cuisine recently.  It appears to be freshly-painted a pale blue-gray.  The dark wood and faux leather chairs are pulled up to 15 white plastic two tops.  The lighting is simple and modern; the Halloween decorations seem an unneeded adaptation to local customs.  

Some basic research revealed that Larb is a minced meat salad, regarded as the national dish of Laos.  Isan is an area of Thailand with many people of Laotian descent.  Sections of the menu are labeled Larb soup and Larb Isan salad.  Other parts resemble a regular Thai menu, accounting for my ordering chicken pad Thai ($9), which came with a small bowl of delicious vegetable broth, and a small spring roll with a good crispy shell surrounding a dull vegetable filling.  The large portion of pad Thai was also very good -- noodles, bean sprouts, egg, green onion, carrots, chopped peanuts and thin slices of white meat chicken.  Service was fast and friendly; about 1/3 of the chairs were occupied.  Worth a return visit or two.  

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Chinatown’s growth has been extraordinary.  Almost all remnants of the Yiddish-speaking Lower East Side have been swamped by the eastward expansion of recent Fujianese immigrants.  Little Italy has shrunk to a commercial strip on a couple of blocks of Mulberry Street, north of Canal Street, and a few shops on intersecting side streets.  However, I just came across two developments, with important implications for the area's entire ecosystem.  

Baz, bagel and restaurant (sic), 181 Grand Street, just opened, featuring Jewish-style (non-Kosher) food, such as potato latkes ($10), matzoh ball soup ($6) and egg creams ($6).  Bagels start with cream cheese at $3.50, topping off at $16 for Scottish salmon, sable (smoked cod), cream cheese, tomato, onion, and chive.  Hardest to swallow is Dr. Brown’s soda at $3 a can.  So, along with the return of the grandchildren of those who fled the tenements of the Lower East Side about a century ago, we have an attempt to restore Jew food to the downtown scene, at a location that teeters between Little Italy and Chinatown.  I haven’t eaten there, and might only go for a bagel once or twice in the future.  I think that I'll stick to Zucker’s Bagels & Smoked Fish, 146 Chambers Street.  A map app tells me that they are equidistant from the courthouse, at right angles, Zucker's to the west and Baz to the north. Zucker’s prices are 10% to 25% less, and it is populated with kids from Stuyvesant HS nearby, not tourists who ignore Chinatown for a bagel.

The other development is an even bigger surprise, but I'll wait a day or two to describe it.

Friday, November 7, 2014

My cold has lingered and I stayed home from work today to kvetch.  I hope that I will be able to discuss the second important development in the Chinatown ecosystem on Monday.

We expect dumb things from dumb people, cf. Election Day.  However, dumb things from allegedly smart people make for better conversation.  Today's example is the acknowledgment by the administration of Harvard University that it has been secretly filming classes without informing faculty or students.  The proffered rationale by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching was (according to the New York Times) "to investigate professors' complaints that many students skipped lectures, and that attendance dropped as a semester wore on."  A couple of points jump out at me.  First, HIFLAT was unwilling to believe Harvard faculty.  Think about that.  Professors are professing to be inadequate in getting and keeping students in their seats, but you go looking for independent evidence?  What would be gained by proving the faculty wrong?  "Oh, Professor von Schweinpit, those empty seats were an optical illusion."  Or, "There was such a crush of students attempting to get into the lecture hall, that they blocked the entrance."  

Secondly, assuming there was a valid purpose in pursuing this issue, why couldn't the ordinary exercise of human senses be used?  Stroll by, glance through the door, linger at the end of the hour.  Will we discover, instead, that the brother-in-law of HIFLAT's director is in the business of selling, installing and maintaining surveillance equipment?  That would be the American way, after all.