Saturday, May 31, 2025
Last night at dinner, Stony Brook Steve warned of an impending crisis. Children in Chinese and Indian families here are too busy flooding the best colleges and universities to find time to make sesame noodles or lamb biryani, critical elements of my diet.
There may be hope as we look around the Holy Land, however. Every bagel shop that I have patronized in recent years has been staffed by Donald Trump’s least favorite people, Hispanic men. There might be a Cohen in the back adding up the receipts, but there is a Carlos out front schmearing my everything. Can egg rolls be far behind?
. . .
Only slightly overstated.
“[Washington, DC] opened a basketball arena in 1997, a baseball stadium in 2008 and a soccer stadium in 2018 [and is now planning a new football stadium]. In Washington, as in other American cities, homes for sports teams are the only kinds of homes that still get built.”
. . .
The obituary for Lefty Rosenthal, the model for Robert DeNiro in "Casino," says the following: "He was an obsessively detail-oriented businessman who made sure that every blueberry muffin coming out of the Stardust kitchen had at least 10 blueberries in it." As it should be.
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Although Father’s Day is two weeks away, we decided to celebrate with my brother today at Seasons 52, 217 Lafayette Avenue, Edison, New Jersey. It also gave us an opportunity to take our new car out for a ride and see if, in fact, state troopers are attracted to bright red cars.
We arrived unimpeded, the new car’s navigation system taking us on a slightly different route than the GPS on previous trips. This pleased me, because it demonstrated a bit of nonconformity in an increasingly standardized world.
Seasons 52 has over 40 nationwide suburban locations, needing a lot of room with ample parking. And they do a fine job of it. I had a bowl of lobster bisque ($11) followed by a Wood-Grilled Tenderloin Salad, four thick slices of steak, rare as requested, romaine lettuce, spinach, sweet corn, red peppers and pumpkin seeds mixed with a cumin-lime vinaigrette ($23).
The drive back took 50% longer than the drive out, eight lanes of highway traffic merging into three lanes of the Lincoln Tunnel. Still, we arrived at the New Plaza Cinema in time to see “Bad Shabbos,” a farce populated by stereotypical Jewish characters, amusing me while antagonizing my young bride.
Monday, June 2,2025
Happy Birthday, Allison. She can't be that old.
. . .
I’ve never seen any of the “Mission Impossible” films and probably never will. However, I recall being devoted to the original television series about the exploits of a small team of covert government agents, known as the Impossible Missions Force.
Using the Internet to fill out my memory produced some surprises, though. While I placed the show somewhere in my late high school/early college years, it actually ran from 1966 to 1973 when I might even have been considered a grown up. I am more confused by the fact that I lived in a household with a television set only for about the first two years of that period. How come I remember so much about the show?
“Your mission, Dan/Jim [a change in lead character], should you choose to accept it” was the memorable line early in each episode. Now, the question arises: What was the alternative? Was No an acceptable answer?
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
I went to the Center at West Park Presbyterian Church, 135 West 86th Street tonight to hear a reading of “The Righteous” by Jeff Cohen. In addition to my normal interest in righteousness, the appearance of Paul Hecht, Thespian Emeritus, was the clincher.
The fascinating play, more fact than fiction, is about Eduard Schulte, a German industrialist, who learns about early plans for the Final Solution. He provides the information that is incorporated in the famous Riegner telegram to Rabbi Stephen Wise. Wise goes to President Roosevelt, an old friend, who is unwilling to raise the plight of the Jews as a war aim for political and logistical reasons.
Schulte’s behavior, completely unknown for 40 years, viewed by some as betrayal of his country and his family (his two sons were in the Wehrmacht on the Russian front), made no difference; no lives were saved by the revelations. Is it enough to be righteous?
Friday, June 6, 2025
I made a fashion faux pas by my standards this morning. I wore a baseball cap and T-shirt celebrating the same team. Even though it was the New York Rangers, it has to be considered a form of piling on. It is not the major sin of wearing items of opposing teams, Mets and Yankees, for instance. It is less appropriate than boosting non-competing teams of the same city, Mets and Knicks, for example. It is just about on a par with different cities, different sports, Chicago Bulls and Toronto Maple Leafs. Any display of the Dallas Cowboys, of course, is prohibited.
News coming from Gaza these days is about as reliable as news coming from Washington. Lies seem to be the common currency. However, you have to pause when you read something like “Israeli Soldiers Open Fire Near Gaza Aid Site. Gaza Officials Say 27 Are Killed” (New York Times version) or “IDF says troops fired on suspects outside Gaza aid site; Hamas health officials say 27 killed” (Times of Israel version). There just seems to be too many stories in a similar vein to automatically reject them.
Words matter and I believe that Israel is not committing genocide, but the Israel military has committed war crimes. About one-quarter of the Israeli population is Arab, Muslim and Christian. They sit in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court; they are walking Israeli city streets right at this moment. While not drafted, some voluntarily serve in the IDF. The contrast to conditions outside of Israel are dramatic. In addition to senseless killings in Gaza, Arabs (Palestinians) on the West Bank are increasingly experiencing violence at the hands of maniacal Jewish settlers claiming divine authorization. Of course, distinguishing genocide from war crimes makes no difference to the victims and their survivors.
. . .
Reading this blog week by week, you might think that I spend most of my waking hours in restaurants. It ain’t necessarily so. Evidence of this is found in the New York Times annual compilation of “The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2025.” https://www.nytimes.com/
Of the top 10, I’ve only been to Le Bernardin, 155 West 51st Street, so superb that it almost makes the rest of the list unnecessary. This 10% figure more or less applies to the list as a whole. Were I a couple of generations younger, I might act on this shortfall. These days, however, the realms of pizza, bagels and overstuffed sandwiches offer enough for me to explore most of the time.
Another restaurant rater is Opinionated About Dining (OAD), which never seems to have its own people set foot in a restaurant, but rather keeps surveying knowledgeable reviewers, like me, and distributing myriad best of lists. The latest is North America’s Top Restaurants, all 610 of them. https://www.oadguides.
By the way, OAD rates Le Bernardin 129 in North America which definitely raises questions about its judgment.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Why do school buses look like Quonset huts on wheels?
. . .
The fascinating play, more fact than fiction, is about Eduard Schulte, a German industrialist, who learns about early plans for the Final Solution. He provides the information that is incorporated in the famous Riegner telegram to Rabbi Stephen Wise. Wise goes to President Roosevelt, an old friend, who is unwilling to raise the plight of the Jews as a war aim for political and logistical reasons.
Schulte’s behavior, completely unknown for 40 years, viewed by some as betrayal of his country and his family (his two sons were in the Wehrmacht on the Russian front), made no difference; no lives were saved by the revelations. Is it enough to be righteous?
Friday, June 6, 2025
I made a fashion faux pas by my standards this morning. I wore a baseball cap and T-shirt celebrating the same team. Even though it was the New York Rangers, it has to be considered a form of piling on. It is not the major sin of wearing items of opposing teams, Mets and Yankees, for instance. It is less appropriate than boosting non-competing teams of the same city, Mets and Knicks, for example. It is just about on a par with different cities, different sports, Chicago Bulls and Toronto Maple Leafs. Any display of the Dallas Cowboys, of course, is prohibited.
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