Category Archives: Culture

Enthusiasts, Eccentrics and the Unamused

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Howard, Manny, "My Empire of Dirt," New York Magazine, 17 September 2007, pp. 22-29 & 107-108

From the Hell Is Other People Files comes this great cover story from last week’s New York Magazine about a man who decided to take the eat local movement to the next step and tried to eat only out of his own back yard … in Brooklyn. On the cover, the story is billed as “Green 1/55th of an Acre,” though inside the title is “My Empire of Dirt,” (Manny Howard, 17 September 2007, pp. 22-29 & 107-108). A significant subplot of the story is just how much this little venture pissed off his wife. Mr. Howard recounts the following story:

Then came the last straw. The following afternoon, Caleb and I constructed most of a high-rise chicken coop in a few hours. We decided on a vertical design filled with ramps so that it would take up a minimum of the garden’s square footage (another concession to our urban setting). We equipped it with wheels and tracks so the poop could be removed from under it and the coop rolled back into place. The work was going well. At about 5:30 p.m., Caleb scrubbed up and got on his bike in order to get home in time to tidy up and attend his bartending class. At 6:30, I was putting the finishing touches on the rig. Inspired by the coop design in Nick Park’s animated film Chicken Run, I was using the table saw to mill eight-inch plywood into strips to make footholds for the entrance ramp when the blade of the saw tagged my right pinkie, destroying the second knuckle. Parts of my finger were left on the saw and on the ground.

I pried my cell phone out of my work pants using my left hand and, holding my right hand above my head, called Josh, a childhood friend who is now a firefighter and, more to the point, lives around the corner. He ran over immediately and field-dressed the mangled wound while I stood there scared—not so much of the wound, which I figured was not going to kill me, but of Lisa, who probably would. I expected her to come through the door with the kids at any moment. After another long day at the office, this would be quite a scene for her to stumble into.

Deciding not to take me to an emergency room, where we’d get stuck at the end of a long queue, Josh located a hand surgeon named Danny Fong on Canal Street, and he agreed to see me and my pinkie immediately. But before we could get out the door, Lisa turned up with Heath and Jake. Before even a hello, I said, as casually as I could muster, “Hon, I’ve banged my finger and I need to go to the doctor.”

“How?” she asked. “How bad?”

“Not too bad,” I lied. Then I came clean: “With the table saw.”

She screamed in anguished frustration. She couldn’t just resent me for my silly folly; now that I’d maimed myself in the process, she had to feel sympathy too.

Behind every enthusiast or eccentric stands a spouse decidedly less than amused, doing their part to reign in these outliers of spirit. In some ways we all support one another, but in demanding support in return, we all collude in deadening each other.

Disparaging Comparisons Between Washington, D.C. and New York

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16 September 2007, the Financial District from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

Every visit I make to New York is a painful reminder what a grim and slender existence one leads living in Washington, D.C. For some time now two large comparisons have been part of my usual refrain.

  • The people in New York are so much more interesting and varied than in D.C. In Washington, D.C. it seems as if there is one perfect model and everyone is judged according to how closely they can approximate that one right way to be. To be fashionable in D.C. is about conformity. In New York everyone is struggling to differentiate themselves and people are judged by how unique they are. Every aspect of personae and identity is part of the pallet (though beyond one’s creative control, most unusual or inscrutable combination of ethnic background is in play).

  • People talk about a New York minute: everything in New York is so fast paced. But when I’m in New York I feel like I may as well be in Paris. New Yorkers understand joie de vivre. They do it in enough ways that it would be difficult to catalog. People take time to enjoy themselves. Everywhere you go there are little cafés where people are having a leisurely meal and talking with a friend or watching the crowds pass. Kitchens are small so food is most commonly very basic, focusing on quality of ingredients rather than labor in preparation. People lavish a lot of attention on their animals and are almost universally excited about the pets of others. The city may be gigantic, but the neighborhoods are small and everywhere you go there are meetings, planned and accidental and people talking. Everyone has an avocation to which they are very devoted.

A few other observations about New York and D.C.:

  • New York is a city with a staggering number of restaurants. On Saturday night S. and I were out wandering and decided that we wanted some Italian food. We simply wandered, confident that in a short time we would stumble upon exactly what we wanted. And in a few blocks we came to a tiny Italian place with tile floors, dark walls, little tables, a cramped bar half-way back surrounded by about a dozen older male waiters in white shirts and black ties running in every direction. The food was unpretentious, but quality. There are probably so many restaurants like that in New York than one couldn’t locate them all without the aid of technology. In Washington, D.C. there are maybe three or four such restaurants and they may be a dying breed (I’m thinking Giovanni’s Trattu on Jefferson Place or Trattoria Italiano in Woodly Park). Probably just the number of new restaurants that open and old restaurants that go out of business in New York exceeds the total number or restaurants in the entire District of Columbia.

  • While I was away for the weekend, Matthew Yglesias made an exuberant post about a new place in town serving late night breakfast (“Late Night Late Night Breakfast Blogging,” 16 September 2007). This is indeed a very big deal in D.C. To date, just about the only place in the city where breakfast was available at any time other than breakfast time was The Dinner. In fact, just about the only place that anything was available late — or at least later than the post-last-call places on bar rows — was again, The Dinner. This is unbelievable in a major city. In New York, as is well known, the opening or closing of such a place is a nonevent, so common are such places. And in New York they all deliver with a $5.00 minimum order. In D.C. the standard minimum for delivery is $20.00.

  • Both New York and Washington, D.C. are noisy cities. I find that increasingly I like the noise of New York. It is the noise of life and work: delivery trucks dropping things off, garbage trucks taking things away, crowds of people. In Washington, D.C. the noise is that of the delusions of the national security state: police sirens, emergency vehicles rushing around from one nonevent to the next, convoys for VIPs.

  • It’s amusing the degree to which New Yorkers match their city. New York is crumbling and second hand. So are a surprising number of its residents.

  • For months now I have been wanting to get to Mark Israel’s Doughnut Plant. Their signature, the Tres Leche, is indeed one dope-ass doughnut! When I walked up, there was a “back in five minutes” sign up in the window and a small crowd gathered around outside waiting. The store is completely inauspicious, consisting of just a little counter and a window back to the kitchen and some storage overflow, but if you find yourself in the Lower East Side it is definitely worth a jaunt.

Starry Night

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The Reigning Queen of Everything, Starry Night, 13 September 2007, 216 Franklin Street, Greenpoint, New York

I probably won’t be making any posts over the weekend as I will be up in New York for the opening of a friend’s burlesque / variety show.

In case any New Yorkers stumble across this page, the show is on Thursday, 13 September 2007 at 9:00 PM at the East Coast Aliens’ Studio at 216 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Tickets are $12.00 at the door. After the first show, there will be a new lineup every month for the next six months.

Popcorn Workers’ Lung

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This is potentially very bad news for K.:

Harris, Gardiner, “Doctor Links a Man’ Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit,” The New York Times, 5 September 2007

A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants.

Lung specialists and even a top industry official say the case, the first of its kind, raises serious concerns about the safety of microwave butter-flavored popcorn.

Apparently many brands of microwave popcorn use a chemical called diacetyl to create their buttery flavor and inhalation of diacetyl is strongly associated with an inflammatory lung disease called bronchiolitis obliterans or “popcorn workers’ lung” (I hear a neo-Dickensonian tale in there somewhere). This guy had consumed at least two bags of microwave popcorn a day for the last ten years and when doctors measured the levels of diacetyl in his house, they found them comparable to those in popcorn factories.

K.’s tastes are so bland that he may have saved himself by not bothering with the buttered brands, but on the offhand chance that you have, K., the FDA might want to get in touch with you.

A Root Extravaganza

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5 September 2007, crockpot root extravaganza

Something that has been on my list for the longest time is a crockpot. I have been fantasizing about being able to come home, chop up a bunch of vegetables, throw them in a pot, and put the pot in the refrigerator. Then, before leaving for work the next morning, put it on low, leave for ten or twelve hours and come home to hot, stewey goodness.

5 September 2007, crockpot Mediterranean stew with squash

Anyway, S. and I finally picked one up this weekend. Yesterday it was Mediterranean stew with yams, tonight it’s Mediterranean stew again, substitute squash for yams (pictured above). The best will be in a few days though. I’ve never eaten a turnip before and have been dieing to try one for months now, but been at a loss as to what to do with one (is it like a giant radish, or is it more like a potato?). Anyway, next up on the crockpot experiment schedule is root extravaganza: turnips, rutabagas, beets, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, leeks and onions. Throw ’em in a pot and cook em’ up, yum!

The model we bought even comes with a canvas tote bag so next time MoveOn hosts a meeting of the neighborhood activists or we volunteer at the retirement community we will be all ready to go. Now if only they would make a combo bag for both the crockpot and my yoga mat so that I could go strait from yoga class to whatever volunteer opportunity / activist get-together I had in store, it would be perfect.

Before I leave the subject of the crockpot, a word of defense regarding structure food versus smash food is in order. Structure food is all the stuff that you see on the cooking shows: a tremendous amount of energy is given over to fussing at how all the different little pieces and individual flavors are arranged and laid out in often elaborate designs on the plate. Then there’s smash food. Smash food is where everything is just jumbled together in one admixture of flavor. The quintessential smash foods are all lowbrow. Nachos, burritos, Italian food, breakfast foods are all perfect examples. For a greasy spoon breakfast you take your egg and hash browns and run them all together and use the toast like an extra utensil to fork it all down. Even eggs Florentine is smash food masquerading as structure food. I mean, come on, the poached egg yokes and the hollandaise sauce are calling out to be all stirred around and mopped up with the English muffin.

Seize the Opportunity to Throw One Back

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I’m considering educating myself a little on Graham Greene and so, at the inspiration of a passage posted by Andrew Sullivan (“‘The Torturable Class’,” The Daily Dish, 26 July 2007), purchased a copy of Our Man in Havana. Christopher Hitchens wrote the introduction and — apropos an earlier post (“Booz-Hound Christopher Hitchens,” 28 June 2007) — he tells the following tale:

Graham Greene famously subdivided his fictions into ‘novels’ and ‘entertainments’ …

I should like to propose a third, or subcategory: the whisky (as opposed to the nonwhisky) fictions. Alcohol is seldom far from the reach of Greene’s characters, and its influence was clearly some kind of daemon in his work and in his life. A stanza of that witty and beautiful poem ‘On the Circuit,’ written in 1963, registers W. H. Auden’s dread at the thought of lecturing on a booze-free American campus and asks, anxiously and in italics:

Is this my milieu where I must
How grahamgreeneish! How infra dig!
Snatch from the bottle in my bag
An analeptic swig?

Describing a visit to a 1987 conference of ‘intellectuals’ in Moscow in the early Gorbachev years, both Gore Vidal and Fay Weldon were to record Green making exactly this dive into his bottle-crammed briefcase.

Makes me think, as Nietzsche said, that all writing is autobiographical of a sort.

Bad Words

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Dan Savage on the juvenile refusal of naughty words among mainstream publications (“Don’t Be Such a Fucking Pansy, David,” SLOG, 6 August 2007):

Oh, David. Newspapers are for adults. Blogs are for adults. And adults use words like “fuck” all the time. Certainly newspaper writers and editors do — at weeklies and dailies. Even the President and Vice President use profanity, as the Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently noted. So why are daily newspapers written and edited as if their readers are a bunch of prissy ol’ clenchbutts?

I don’t think that your average paper should be written in the tone of The Stranger, but it’s more professional to report a quote as it was spoken than to refer to some hackneyed euphemism cribbed from one of your grandmothers old-time stories. If it includes a swear word, print the swear word.

Recently I went to see Robert Dallek talk on his book, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power at Politics & Prose. Now Politics & Prose is what they call a family store: for their author talks a van from an area assisted living facility regularly disgorges a mob of gray-hairs. And Mr. Dallek isn’t a young scholar anymore. But to hear Mr. Dallek rattle off excerpts from the Nixon transcripts — forget Oliver Stone, the ones who should make a film about Nixon should be the Cohen brothers (need a clue? Try the The Big Lebowski: The Fucking Short Version). And if we made it through the actual Nixon administration we can make it through a few reanimated recitals of his vulgar ramblings.

As that brilliant, closing line from Apocalypse Now goes, “We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write ‘fuck’ on their airplanes because it’s obscene.”

Mr. Savage follows it up with a few more words on this issue: “Ruffians?,” and “Necessary Profanity.”

Foodie Fetishes

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Given that my last two posts might position me as something of a foodie, a skeptical step back might be in order.

For some people food is a truly important aspect of their lives. For people who garden and eat seasonal foods, I imagine their involvement with food is something akin to the cyclical ceremonial calendars of the religions. Only instead of serving to reify the connection to the sky gods of the major religions, the rituals of food serve to root people to the biorhythms of the Earth. And it probably occupies a similar psychological function, connecting a person to a larger story, cordoning off a ritual time separate from the monotony of the world (in this case the timeless homogeneity of the globalized food supply chain), demonstrating and reaffirming principles by which a community lives (e.g. vegetarians).

While this may be the case for a minority of us, for most foodies it’s the exact opposite: it’s just another commodity fetish.

Plymouth is Back!

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Plymouth English Gin, the original and the redesigned bottles

I learned to drink from four people: my parents and two college fiends, Bill and Mariella. I say that I learned to drink from them because upon reflection, I am frequently impressed at the gems of booze-related insight that I have taken from these four. One evening, while over at Bill and Mariella’s place, the drink on offer was Gordon’s Gin in the one gallon plastic easy pour bottle. I sniffed: “Gordon’s is some pretty bad stuff.” Bill remonstrated with glee, “Bad gin? What are you talking about? They don’t make bad gin.” This is one of those peaces of alky wisdom that I have carried with me since.

But while they don’t make bad gin, not all gin is equal. And so at the beginning of May the New York Times ran a review of gins (Asimov, Eric, “No, Really, It Was Tough: 4 People, 80 Martinis,” 2 May 2007), and despite my concern that the over-excited pretension of a New York Times food review might sour one of my affections, I pressed on and found the article interesting and useful. Unfortunately the useful went catastrophically awry.

I have been in something of a gin doldrum lately. I now blame this on the fact that I have stuck too loyally with Bombay Sapphire. While a complex and flavorful gin, it is also powerful, sharp and nearly overcome by its alcohol. It’s great for a gin and tonic, too busy to blend well in a martini and I have recoiled from it on the rocks. With the New York Times article marked up and in hand I stopped in my neighborhood liquor store looking for what the tasting panel selected as their number one, Plymouth English Gin.

I have to say, I have been amazed at how good the Plymouth is. It really is a perfect, well balanced gin with the canonical amount of juniper. I can’t remember the last time I polished off a bottle of liquor so quickly — no, really, I can’t remember. A week later I was back for another bottle — in college I could have dusted it in a night or two, but I’m not so resilient or stupid anymore. At the end of week two I was back for a third bottle. This time the clerk told me that he only had two left and couldn’t get any more. It turns out that I am not the only person who reads the New York Times and distilling a gin isn’t something that can be done over night. There had been a run on Plymouth and the distillery was rushing to catch up. I took two and the next day at lunch went to the liquor store near my office and snapped up a few more for a store to carry me through the lean season.

My supply was dwindling and I was beginning to get nervous and eye the shallow gin row every time I opened the liquor cabinet and ration my intake. This week I stopped by previously mentioned neighborhood liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine to accompany the dinner-directed bag of groceries in hand. While being rung up I got a premonition and circled back to the end of the counter where the gins are massed and there was a suspicious looking familiar bottle. “What is that square bottle right there?” I inquired. Despite this being my favorite liquor store, the clerk is constantly trying to push me into the popular brand names and refuses to learn that I am always on the prowl for the Plymouth now. He gave it a half turn. “Oh, we just got in a new shipment of the Plymouth.” Saved! Confident that the drought was past I availed myself of only one.