Saturday, March 19, 2022
I defected. I purchased an Apple iPhone. It’s red and it’s a bargain. It replaces a black Samsung phone. Red will reduce the occasions when I can’t find it on the black marble kitchen counter and other dark places. A bargain needs no explanation.
Not only did I defect to Apple, I surrendered on Wordle this morning, the unofficial one at WordleGame.org. 
Please send me the answer; I lost the link.
. . .
How not to spend 1 hour and 32 minutes according to a New York Times movie review
If you can remain awake until the final moments of “Windfall,” then yes, something exciting actually happens. But that’s a very long wait in Charlie McDowell’s oppressive Netflix drama, a gabby hostage movie with a single, covetable location and three unappealing characters.
. . .
It only took me a few hours to encounter Apple’s rapaciousness. Packed with my new phone was this cord, presumably for recharging the battery. 
Notice that it has a middle and two ends, but no beginning. Unless you can generate electricity in your sweaty palm, there is no connection to a power source. I returned to the phone store to point out this seeming oversight and was informed that instead this was Apple’s 20-20 vision, not a case of myopia. Use the plug provided with your other Apple product purchases (don’t we all have a closet full of them?) or spend 20 bucks more.
Monday, March 21, 2022
Dim sum is normally a social occasion, originating in China, where no-need-to-be-working class men sat in the tea house all day nibbling away. Today, in the absence of the usual suspects, I went alone to Dim Sum Palace, 28 West 56 street, for lunch. It is one of three related joints around the Holy Land. It has a full bar, four four-tops in a shed on the curb lane, six tables of varying sizes at street level and additional seating upstairs.
It offers 44 dim sum items and two assortments, colorfully illustrated on a placemat, which is also the order form. Items range from $4.95 to $9.95. There is a complete conventional menu with 32 lunch specials ($13.95 or $14.95), including choice of rice and soup, not such a special deal. I also raised my graying eyebrows at the cost of a pot of tea, $8 for any of six choices.
I had seafood peashoot dumplings (3 pieces for $5.95), shredded roast duck dumplings (3 pieces for $5.95) and crispy garlic spare ribs (18 chunks for $7.95). The dumplings were undistinguished, their wrappers so gummy that it was hard to get them out of the wicker serving baskets. The spare ribs, lightly breaded (pankoed?), deep fried and loaded with garlic, were a treat.
Unless you want a martini with your dim sum, I am not enthusiastic about Dim Sum Palace. However, West 56th Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue may replace East 53rd Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue as the best place to be hungry in Manhattan. I did not do a complete inventory, but I saw Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Middle Eastern, Italian and Cuban restaurants, along with some pubs, Starbucks, Benihana and a sandwich shop. Only a dessert place seems to be missing, a serious omission.
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Two Wheels, 426 Amsterdam Avenue, is a small place with a small menu of Vietnamese food. The interior is equally simple, two long unadorned white walls bracket the narrow space. There is no picture of Ho Chi Minh, the man or the city. Six small tables topped with blond wood are permanently fixed to the floor. Service was efficient and friendly.
I had the very good Signature Bánh Mì, marinated steak with pickled daikon radish, carrot, mayo, cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño on a fresh 9" baguette ($13.75). No, I don't know what the name of the restaurant means.
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
One friend often asks “Why have Jews won so many Nobel Prizes?” and answers his own question with reference to our gene pool. I think that this is a widely held belief among us, but not frequently expressed aloud. It is the secular version of the controversial biblical concept of chosenness.
I found a very satisfying, non-chauvinistic answer in “Genius & Anxiety -- How the Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947” by Norman Lebrecht, an examination of the lives and work of Marx, Disraeli, Heine, Felix Mendelssohn, Freud, Proust, Einstein and Kafka, among others. This list contains some well-known apostates, but, as Lebrecht demonstrates, Judaism stayed with them.
If Jews happen to excel in any particular area, it is generally a consequence of culture and experience rather than DNA. Jews learned from adversity to think differently from others, and, maybe, harder. The composer Gustav Mahler was fond of saying: "A Jew is like a man with a short arm. He has to swim harder to reach the shore." Anxiety acts on them like an Egyptian taskmaster in the book of Exodus. It goads them to acts of genius.
Of course, anxiety may be an inherited trait, although not an exclusively Jewish one.
. . .
I went to the second of three Tipsy Shanghais, 594 Third Avenue, for lunch. It's a small joint, but very attractively decorated. Six two-tops sit alongside a built-in, glass-fronted China (!) cabinet. Opposite are six four-tops separated by filigreed red screens. When I walked in, I was the only customer, but there were 10 more by the time I left.
I started with Steamed Xiaolongbao, soup buns ($6.95 for four pieces). They were very good, as you might expect from a Shanghai staple, and, as long as they were that good, they should have been bigger and/or more numerous. I continued with sweet and sour ribs ($15.95), hoping they were not conventional. They were not. Although the 15 small chunks (smaller than the pieces at Dim Sum Palace on Monday) were on the wrong side of the bone to meat ratio, their rich, dark sauce (soy sauce, rice wine, vinegar and spices) was a treat.
Thursday, March 24, 2022
Another stanza of Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.
Employees in New York City’s securities industry got extra payouts averaging $257,500 in 2021, up 20 percent from their previous peak a year earlier, according to an estimate by Thomas P. DiNapoli, the state comptroller.
. . .
It’s worth noting that the United States Senators expressing the most intense opposition to Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the United States Supreme Court are from Confederate states. Will they ever accept defeat or maybe they never lost?
. . .
Time Out New York presents an “interactive map rank[ing] over 200 of NYC's best bagels,” based on the prodigious research of Mike Varley. https://www.timeout.com/
Varley spent over one year going in and out of bagel shops, always purchasing an everything with scallion cream cheese, an excellent baseline, in my opinion. However, his thoroughness was not thorough enough. Omitted are the last four bagels that I have eaten just within the last two weeks: Fairway, Orwasher’s, Zabar’s and Zucker’s, all within a short stroll from Palazzo di Gotthelf. Back to the pavement, Mike.
Friday, March 25, 2022
New York City Mayor Eric Adams removed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for professional athletes, proving that it is better to be reckless, stubborn and rich rather than just reckless and stubborn.
. . .
Terrific Tom and I had lunch at Don Antonio, 309 West 50th Street, a place that takes pizza seriously. It uses a wood-fired oven imported from Italy and traces its roots back to Naples, the reputed birthplace of pizza. It has about 20 two-tops and a full bar serving food and drinks to another dozen customers. Tom and I agreed that the product was superior, chewy,
not doughy, with blistered edges. My 12" pie was topped with sausage
and mushrooms ($18) and Tom's with prosciutto and mushrooms ($19). Tom and pizza made a very good ending to my week.
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