“your eternal highness, we have scoured the entire empire and beyond to satisfy your request for a fighting dog. 98 times we have brought forth to egypt a canine we deemed worthy of defending the empire whilst fighting beside you, our most holy monarch, and 98 times we have been disappointed. however, we recently discovered what i have been told is the most brutal, vicious beast ever. we found him in a remote area of byzantium feasting on the carcass of an animal several times his size and weight. he has been straining at his harness throughout the trip back to egypt and has been uttering the most remarkable things.

pharaoh: “the dog speaks? what has he said?”. the pharaoh sounds exactly like patrick stewart; he speaks with an upper class british accent. all foreigners do, especially if you can’t understand their actual language.

“sire, he threatened the soldier who captured him. he told the soldier that he would bite his throat out, rip him to shreds and tear him limb from limb if he got close enough. we have had a most difficult time keeping them apart. shall i bring him to you, exalted one?”

pharaoh (excitedly): “make it so, number one. i must see this amazing beast!”

“at once, your highness”

the first minister quickly returns with the beast in tow and presents him to the pharaoh “this, your excellency……..is dog 99″. 99 saunters up to the pharaoh, sniffs his crotch and says in his unmistakable voice. “how ya doin?” the pharaoh looks at him approvingly and asks “is it true that you are the most viscious of all the beasts east and west of the mighty nile?”

99 cocks an eyebrow, looks at the pharaoh right in the eye and drawls (?) in a deadpan voice: “you wanna piece of me?”

pharaoh: “no, no. that is completely unnecessary. you look exactly like what i’ve been searching for”

99: “yeah, fine. when do we eat?”

the pharaoh claps his hands and several servants appear. pharaoh: “bring him whatever he pleases. obey his every wish. he is to be treated as you would treat me.” as the servants are leaving the royal chamber, 99 adds “and make it snappy”.

a short time later, the monarch returns and gazes with pride upon the dog, who is now eating what appears to be half an ox. with his mouth full of meat, 99 turns over his shoulder and explains that the amount of food he eats is necessary to provide the strength needed to engage in mortal combat. the pharaoh, impressed, reminds the servants to cater to his every whim.

later that season, word comes from the frontier that barbarians are invading from the west. the pharaoh summons his army, including the minister of the armament, whose sole duty now (after weeks of training simulations) is to bring 99 to the front to engage the enemy. as they near the zone of war, 99 struggles mightily at his leash, cursing the barbarians and begging to be set free so that he can kill the heathen and gorge himself on the blood of the foes of the pharaoh. as they spot the enemy from a rise, 99′s growling and barking reach a crescendo of saliva frothed snarls as he strains to be released. however, just as the minister is about to unleash the fury that is 99, the dog turns around and in sotto vocce, tells his keeper “don’t touch that collar”, even as he continues to bark and growl. when the minister initially refuses to do as the dog requests, 99 reminds him that the pharaoh has ordered him to obey 99 as if anything the dog said came from the pharaoh himself. the minister looks on helplessly as the army of the nile is required to fight without the help of the dog. the pharoah’s legions are decimated as a result and both dog and keeper barely make it back to the shores of alexandria. the pharoah, astounded, asks what has happened. before the minister can say anything, 99 steps in front of him and accuses the minister of purposely holding him back from his assigned task, suggesting that he must be a spy for the enemies of the pharaoh. the minister can hardy believe this. sputtering and turning beet red with anger, he tries to turn the story around accuses the dog of cowardice. 99 stands his ground, pointing out to the pharaoh that the man is red because he is shamed with guilt. the pharaoh, furiously asks the minister while indicating the dog (who appears to be the very picture of innocence, leaning against a porphyry pillar, his eyes pointed upward, and tonelessly whistling), “why should a noble beast such as this lie? only humans lie, and cowards DIE. with a wave of his hand, several of the remaining royal guards seize the hapless minister and he is carried off to meet his fate. 99 (who is by now laughing to himself, thinking “looks like number one is neck deep in number two”) sidles up to the pharoah and suggests that they bury their sorrows in a hearty plate of stew. the pharoah agrees, and off they go to enjoy their meal together.

99 figures that this kind of story will only work once, so he decides it is time to get out of dodge (which won’t exist for another 3 millenia, but you get the idea). he wanders the streets of alexandria until he comes upon a bearded man with a remarkable resemblance to charlton heston. since the man is carrying some food, 99 decides this guy looks like a good “mark” and so he follows him home. he is overjoyed when he finds out that the man (and a bunch of his friends) are about to leave egypt for good. it is not safe for 99 since the pharaoh found a corroborating witness to 99′s unwillingness to go to war for his monarch, so the dog wants to put as much distance between him and egypt as he can; and fast. they leave with a bunch of people in the middle of the night. they spend what seems like a dog’s life wandering around the desert, and one day 99 is amazed to see the man he now knows as moses talking to piece of shrubbery that seems to be on fire. moses, intent on listening to what the bush has been telling him, is about to find out how to assure that his people will live in peace and prosperity in perpetuity. 99, (who had recently sneaked into the tent where the provisions were kept, ate about half of a watermelon and now has a bursting bladder) figures he can kill 2 birds with one stone, lifts his rear leg and lets loose a stream of urine that appears to have shot out of a water cannon, thus extinguishing the bush just before moses was to learn god’s secret advice. needless to say, 99 was a canus non grata after that.

99 next surfaced in the renaissance city of firenze, living with an artist named leo. leo had been asked to paint a portrait of his neighbors wife, and being a perfectionist, spent months trying to find just the right pose for the woman. it seems she was quite homely, and leo was attempting to have her pose in a such a way that would least showcase her unattractiveness. every time he would start to paint, 99 would interrupt him, either complaining to leo that he hadn’t eaten in weeks, or that was time for his thrice daily constitutional. as the months flew by, leo’s neighbor became more and more impatient, until he told the artist that he was setting a deadline. leo painted furiously during the days leading up to the deadline and even the dog seemed to cooperate (leo had hired a new cook, and she always seemed to be giving him table scraps of one kind or another, she must have believed the dog when he swore it had been so long since he had eaten that he didn’t even remember what food looked like; women have always been susceptible to 99′s charm), but just as he was about to reluctantly put the final details on the picture, 99 came down with a bad stomach virus and had several “accidents” in the house for the past day and a half, so when he said “gotta go; gotta go NOW”, leo grabbed the leash and made a bee line for the streets. what leo did not realize was that the deadline was that very afternoon. once 99 got outside, he SEEMED TO FORGET ABOUT THE “emergency” and followed his nose to the bakery down the street, where a batch of fresh biscotti has just come out of the oven. so intent was leo on fulfilling 99′s intestinal needs, he missed the deadline. the irate neighbor came next door at the appointed time, only to find the as yet unfinished portrait. enraged, he grabbed the still wet canvas and went home with it, leaving but half of the agreed upon sum of lire on the easel. when leo returned home (after sharing a biscotti or three with his dog), he discovered the painting missing and the money in its place. he shrugged his shoulders and accompanied 99 for a snack in the kitchen. this painting of the giaconda is now the most famous portrait in the world and it is due in no small part to a certain gray dog. without 99, leonardo da vince would have completed the mona lisa with the one feature that he just could not bear to commit to canvas. the neighbors wife had a dark, bushy monobrow, and was as hideous as frieda kalo.

colonial america was an exciting place to be. 99 had been adopted by a fairly well to do boston silversmith (and dentist!), after he ascertained that the smithy’s income would support his prodigious appetite. the smithy himself was a fairly ill mannered man, fond of rum, but between the man, his wife and their children, 99 lacked for naught. one day, someone left the door to the henhouse open, and 99, curious as ever, went in for a look. as he walked in, he said in his usual friendly voice “how ya doin?” the hens, had only known one type of grey animal before; a wolf, and therefore were deathly afraid of the friendly dog. they started cackling and flying around him in a frenzy. 99, brave soul that he was, got scared and started barking. that caused the chickens to go crazier, and when the smithy came in to investigate what was going on, he entered to see a scene of pure pandemonium. he chased the barking dog around, eggs and chickens and yellow feathers and grey fur flying everywhere, until he got the the dog out. when the man finally emerged from the henhouse, he almost looked like he had been tarred and feathered. the broken eggs caused the feathers to stick to him and when when one of his children saw him, he shrieked, afraid that his father was an indian. this started the man thinking if his own child didn’t recognize him, neither would anyone else. thus 99 gave rise to the idea of the colonial revolutionaries disguising themselves indians during the boston tea party.

99 had a rather peculiar manner of barking. he would first utter a single bark, and if that did not garner the attention of whomever it was that he was barking at, a double bark was then uttered. if he still did not attract the recipient of the intended bark, he would then repeat the sequence, first with a single, then a double bark, ad nauseum until the racket was too annoying to ignore any longer. the silversmith seemed to be a member of some sort of cabal to overthrow the government, so he was always involved in clandestine meetings and furtive guests would come and go during all hours of the day and night. because of these long, irregular hours (including those during which the smithy had to work in his shop) not to mention his round the clock imbibation of alcohol, he was prone to falling asleep at the drop of a hat.

it was amazing that the man could earn a living at all. his eyesight was rather poor. he worked with a strong loupe when in his shop or surgery, but was always squinting. he always swore that he had to do something, as his spectacles had become more and more useless as time passed, but the man did not have enough time to do anything about it. one evening, after a large feast in the house, the smithy had fallen asleep on the couch. he had left his spectacles on the table next to sizable chunk of left over leg of lamb, but had forgotten to feed the dog before he drifted off. 99, who under no circumstances would be denied a meal, began his plaintiff series of alternating single, then double barks in the dining room next to the food. when this racket seemed not to produce the desired effect, 99 sprang into action on his own. using a clever trick taught to him by his sister, lucy, 99 dragged the tablecloth (and the plates upon it) closer and closer until he was able to reach the prized reward. unfortunately , the smithy’s glasses, as well as a plate and 2 drinking glasses, were pulled off the table and on to the floor as well. the ensuing racket finally woke the man up and as he drunkenly lurched into the room to see 99 happily munching on the leftover shank, he accidentally stepped on his glasses, breaking the lenses and thus rendering them immediately useless. the man, disgusted, turned around, then slurred wore a few well chosen swear words, and went back to the couch to sleep it off.

now that he didn’t have a choice in the matter, the smithy had to get new spectacles. a well known scientist in the far off city of philadelphia, benjamin franklin, had a reputation as an excellent eye specialist (not to mention an even better reputation as a lady’s man), so he enlisted the services of the man to help him with his failing vision. after examining him, franklin produced a pair of specs that amazed the smithy to the extent that it improved his vision. so impressed was he with franklin, that he engaged him in talks with some of his fellow conspirators and convinced franklin to join in their adventure to gain the colonies’ independence from the rule of the english and their tyrannical king. once franklin got involved things, started moving forward in a hurry.

it was well known that the british were going to start hostilities sooner, rather than later, and new england would seem to be their first target. some sort of early warning system had to be set up, but the question was how? first off, nobody knew if the enemy would attack with a naval barrage or a cavalry driven invasion. a sentry would be placed in a tower near the harbor, and others on the roads leading to lexington and concorde, but how would the local militias be alerted. the smithy met with several men about how to do this, and it was decided to use a series of lantern signals, but the question arose as how to make the signal very short, yet very specific. as the men went back and forth on the subject, 99 decided his bladder need emptying, he went into the room and discreetly nudged his master’s leg. when that didn’t work, he started whining. 99 was an expert whiner. he practiced the whine and the “i’m starving” look in front of a mirror until he was en expert in both. this evening, with the men involved in such heavy discussion, he was completely ignored. he then started his barking routine, first with a single, then followed by a double bark, over and over again, until the silversmith looked up at the dog and shouted “eureka, i have the answer! When the british are sighted, we will put lanterns in the highest bell tower, one if by land and two if by sea!”

after drinking a toast (actually several toasts) to their brilliant plan, is was decided that the silversmith would remain awake late that night, after the other men had retired to their assigned locations, waiting for the signal that an attack was imminent. in all the excitement, the man had forgotten to walk the dog, and by the time 11:30 had come around, he had fallen asleep, yet again, on the couch. by this time, 99′s bladder was about to burst and the man did NOT like it if he had an accident in the house, so 99 started barking loudly and furiously again. this woke the smithy from his deep slumber. as he groggily arose, he remembered that the dog had not yet been walked. he wearily put the leash on the dog and they went outside for a stroll. as they walked back to the house after 99 finished his business, the man happened to glance up at the bell tower and saw two lanterns lit! then paul revere rushed home, saddled up his horse with his faithful dog 99 at his side, went for his famous midnight ride, calling out to everyone “The british are coming, the british are coming!”

india in the late 1800′s was a hellhole. hot, dusty, disease ridden, the troops defending the rapidly shrinking british empire did not have an easy go of it. among the soldiers, was a certain rather well fed young physician who missed the camaraderie afforded him by his faithful irish setter, who lived with his sister, thousands of miles to the west in the outskirts of victorian london. so when a rather scruffy looking gray dog wandered into the garrison on new year’s day, 1899, the young doctor was in a charitable mood and offered the dog a treat. the dog gently took the food from his hand, and after the doctor withdrew his wrist from the dog’s throat, he gave him a rather soggy pet on the head. the two quickly became inseparable. in honor of the new year, the dog was christened 99. dogs, as well as men, are creatures of habit. each afternoon, slightly before 4 pm, the good doctor put up a kettle of water with which to practice the only remnant of civilization he could still have any control over out in the province of darjeeling…..tea time. the dog was just as habitual. as soon as he saw his master put the kettle up, it must have stimulated some core of his being , and since the dog had a prodigious appetite, it was necessary for him to go outside to relieve himself on a fairly regular basis. this coincided nicely with the same time each day. the tea from india was a tepid, weak brew at the time. the locals and soldiers alike warmed up the water just a bit, since the ambient temperature was already so high, they did not want to imbibe a hot liquid. however, since the doctor had to walk the dog, the water had a chance to boil. it was remarkable how much more flavorful the darjeeling tea tasted when it was made with water brought to the correct temperature. the physician shared his discovery with the other soldiers and pretty soon, everyone in the british army was boiling their water for tea. the physician noticed at around the same time that the incidents of cholera, which had been as common among the soldiers as the locals, began to decrease at an astounding rate, but only among the soldiers. trained in the scientific method, the physician began to investigate and discovered the correlation between boiling the water and the decrease in cholera outbreaks among the troops. and the one who was ultimately responsible was 99.

one night the next year, the garrison was attacked and both the doctor and 99 were wounded; each being shot in the leg. though a flesh wound, it spelled the end of military service for the both of them. from that fateful day forth, both man and dog would walk with a limp; barely noticeable when the weather was warm and pleasant, but more pronounced during the typically damp chilly months so common to london. since his sister had mailed him the bad news that his setter had passed, he decided to bring 99 to london. he sat up a small practice and 99 would sit in the front of the surgery, greeting each of the doctor’s patients with a friendly “how ya doin?” as they entered. he wasn’t particularly fond of one of doctor watson’s close friends; a tall and ascetic man with a rather large, aquiline nose who tended towards hypochondria. a frequent visitor to the surgery, he was a consulting detective for scotland yard named sherlock holmes. holmes was a great fan of the bard; he thought it preposterous that a dog should have a numerical designation, so he called the dog “toby” after the beloved shakespearean character, sir toby belch in “the twelfth night”. 99 always ignored holmes when he called him toby. he was watson’s dog and his name was and always had been 99. when holmes was first starting out upon the road that would eventually lead him to everlasting fame, he requested that watson help him solve a case that was the talk of london. a prominent merchant in the well to do neighborhood of knightsbridge had been shot. they were in possession of a glove worn by the killer, so holmes wanted to ask the dog to follow the scent and find the murder weapon, a pistol. he found 99 in watson’s parlor, near the fire. the dog was sitting in a plush chair, legs crossed and wearing his favorite fez and smoking jacket, puffing away on a meerschaum pipe and reading the daily tabloids. he looked over his shoulder at the detective and in a world weary voice answered “yeah, whatever, what’s in it for me?” after being promised a big, fat juicy steak, the three of them set out into the london fog. 99 was (for a change) starving, so when he encountered the scent from a particularly good smelling remnant of meat that someone had thrown in a trash receptacle in an alley behind a restaurant, he loped ahead, yelling out “i found it” and knocked the can over. the pistol, which the unlucky crook had, by coincidence, thrown into the very same trash can, spilled onto the floor of the alley. when holmes approached and saw the gun, he actually thought the dog had understood him and had succeeded in finding his quarry. what holmes failed to notice was 99 sitting near the back door to the restaurant, gnawing contentedly on the meaty beef bone that had extricated from the can. the headline in the next day’s times would report that with the help of a gray dog, holmes and watson helped capture one of london’s most notorious muderers. 99 laughed to himself and thought what a clueless twit this holmes was; it was a good thing that he was there to help him out. since the team had been so successful, the detective would enlist watson’s help whenever appropriate. 99 would always accompany them, warning them if danger was imminent. it seemed strange that they noticed that after warning his companions, 99 would always seem to temporarily disappear, only to re-appear as if by magic once the danger had passed. they must have thought the dog was looking for the next threat, but knowing what we do now, 99 was probably hiding somewhere, cowering in fear while thinking about where his next meal was coming from.

fez, pharoh, meerscham pip, sherlock holmes

tr panama canal

after years of waiting, we finally got to try the newest “hot spot” up on 125th street; red rooster harlem. we had read about it and called several times for reservations, but we were always denied entry until the saturday before halloween this year. a perfect storm, consisting of a perfect (october snow) storm, a p.o.s. hugh jackman extravaganza (I was hoping for “wolverine”, i got “the boy from oz”……not that there’s anything wrong with that) which ended fairly early, and a virtual absence of traffic due to the storm, allowed us to get uptown before they closed the kitchen. chef marcus samuelson offers a variety of homestyle dishes that are sure to please just about everybody. i had anticipated eating there for a while, and had studied the online menu extensively, so when the waiter offered me a menu, i politely refused. the reputation of samuelson’s “yardbird”, a.k.a. fried chicken, has been on my palatal radar for quite a while, so i could hardly wait to order it. as usual, ana ordered some kind of fish. the food was de-lish and every bit as good as i hoped it would be, but when i asked the maitre’d about the super crunchy, tasty crust on the fried chicken, i was told that it only consisted of flour and eggs. i didn’t believe him for a second, but it was the best fried chicken i’ve ever had the pleasure of eating! usually side dishes at a meal are relegated to same role that extras are cast in a movie; a necessary evil, but necessary nonetheless, but i must mention the black eyed peas. they were scrumptious.

red rooster has joined neighborhood stalwart, sylvia’s, and relative newcomer, chez lucienne, as a trifecta of good eating, all within a stone’s throw of each other. such has been red rooster’s notoriety that when people can’t get in, they go next door for french cuisine or down the block for a soul food tour d’force. a win, win, win situation. we actually came very close to getting a win, win, win, win situation. while i was washing up in the men’s room, i noticed what looked like a folded up dollar bill on the floor next to the toilet. upon closer inspection, i saw that it was actually a ten dollar bill. i grabbed a paper towel and enveloped the currency in such a way as not to let it touch my hands or the inside of my pocket, lest i catch cooties from the bathroom floor. i reported my find to our dinner companions for the evening, vivian and yuval. we decided that the best thing to do with the money was to buy a lottery ticket. the next day i went to a gas station, unfurled the ten onto the counter (still managing not to touch it), and purchased a 245 million dollar powerball ticket. i was careful to see that the black, grease coated hand of the gas station attendant gave me the ticket before he picked up the money. remember, a known evil is better than an unknown evil. long story short, we didn’t win.

travel a bit further little south, and you’ll find 92nd street. we never stop to thank the british colonists who eliminated the convoluted dutch method of naming and numbering streets. they evidently threw darts at a map and placed (and named) the streets wherever the darts alit, hence the mish-mosh of streets in the extreme south end of manhattan. the british, stiff upper lip and all, organized the streets with a grid system. avenues run north and south (or in new york speak, “uptown and downtown”), with the streets crossing at right angles, running east and west. if you know this system, it will help you navigate the island with relative ease. a hint is that the even numbered streets usually run east, and vice versa. it’s not written in stone, but it works in most cases. one of the notable exceptions to this “rule” takes place in and around the queensboro bridge. this must present plenty of confusion for out-of-town tourists as this particular east river crossing now has no less than 3 different names. new york natives call it the queensboro bridge. fans of simon and garfunkle naturally call it the 59th street bridge (their lyrics are pretty much a quote of a cbs newsradio rush hour traffic report describing the volume of cars on the bridge: “slow down, you move too fast”) and now the bloomberg administration, in its effort to evidently appease the notorious map and signmaker’s lobby, has dubbed it the ed koch bridge. as crazy as this is, it is still SO much easier than, say, navigating the streets of paris, where the streets run in an ever expanding spiral, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

that is how owen wilson’s character, gil, in woody allen’s “midnight in paris” was able to travel back and forth in time with such ease. the streets are so convoluted that even father time could get disoriented. i haven’t seen a woody allen movie that i enjoyed as much as this one in years. it’s a good thing the movie was as good as it was. we saw it in the middle of a summer heat wave, in the artsy-fartsy kew gardens theater. there had been a fire in the theater earlier that week, and the still sopping carpet made a “squishing” noise underfoot while the drone of carpet driers filled the air as we entered. oh, yeah, and the air conditioning had broken. to add insult to injury, the movie was being shown in the cramped, airless second floor theater, just below the black tarred flat roof during a cloudless afternoon. i had to leave halfway through the movie, not because i couldn’t take the heat, but because my parking meter had run out of time. i gladly, hurriedly returned. it was such an involving movie that it seemed like i, like gil, was immersed in that parisian time so long ago; to cavort with the likes of hemmingway, picasso and gertrude stein. ms. stein, though long dead, has somehow managed to be intertwined in several things we have seen and did this year. besides the movie (and kathy bates NAILED her role), we saw an exhibit of stein’s collection of “modern” art at the san francisco moma, when we were in the city on the bay for a wedding this past june (see “the best laid plans”). upon returning to the apple, we found another stein exhibit, this time featuring the collection of the cone sisters of baltimore at the jewish meuseum. on 92nd street. when ana asked me if i wanted to see this exhibition, i did what everyone does nowadays, i googled it. nothing. the problem was one of ego. most people pronounce my last name “cone”, so i naturally looked under “cohen”. no, their “cone” was really a “cone”. between these 3 things, we got a pretty fair amount of insight into what the art scene must have been like in the early part of the 20th century.

the most well known institution on 92nd street is the 92nd street “y”. this ymha is just like its christian cousin, the ymca, but the “h” stands for hebrew. everyone who has visited yankee stadium for the past decade or so knows that come the sixth inning, the groundskeepers come out and everyone sings and dances to the village people’s seventies hit “ymca”. an inning later, for the seventh inning stretxch, we hear “god bless america” as sung by kate smith. i was surprised to hear “sweet carloine” by neil diamond sung during the seventh inning stretch when were up in enemy terretory in boston a few years ago. the story goes like this. neil diamond (a long time customer of lord cleaners!) grew up and went to high school in brooklyn (along with neil sedaka, barbara streisand and carol king). therefore, he was a lifelong brooklyn dodger fan, and as such, hated the yankees. when the dodgers bolted brooklyn after the 1957 season, he had to find another team whose fans hated the yankees as much as the dodger fans did. that’s how he wound up in boston.

but back to the “y”. it is a mecca (pun intended) for adult education and semi-professional plays and the like. but the y’s reputation as a preschool (ages 2 and up) is what sets it apart from its peers. it is so difficult to be granted admission into these hallowed halls, you have to apply within milliseconds of getting a “positive” on your early pregnancy test. even that may not be enough to be accepted; your toddler must be: fluent in at least a half dozen languages, a math prodigy, have at least 2 works of published original fiction (one in verse, the other prose), and play 2 or 3 musical instruments (level virtuoso or, preferably, above). the reason for this ultracompetitive scenario is that people perceive the y as a gateway to the ivy league. they can’t focus their sights on horace mann, stuyvesant, or any of the other fine “magnet” schools in and around the city until they have taken that first giant step. it’s either the big (ivy) leagues, or bust. we personally know people whose kids were rejected from the y, and have subsequently just given up and moved to the suburbs.

as we drove east on west 92nd street this past halloween, we were surprised to see that many of the brownstones along the street had their front doors wide open. this neighborhood is usually sealed up tight as a drum, but there must have been a block association that got everyone together and there were a bunch of of parties going on simultaneously. without a care in the world, ghosts and goblins traveled door to ghoulishly decorated door. children were trick or treating just like in the old days, before pedophiles lurking in every dark shadow and random acts of gangland violence put a kibosh on uptown’s halloween. it was very heartening seeing people taking their neighborhood back. maybe, it has only just started on 92nd street. the rest of the city? why not?

three decades and change ago, the musical “evita” was the toast of broadway. the much hyped and ballyhooed reunion of patty lupone and mandy patinkin, currently playing at the barrymore theater on 47th street played to a (way) less than full house and after seeing the show, i can see why. the reviews of the show questioned the material and they were pretty much correct. during the short first (40 minute) act, lupone does a servicable job of most of the songs, but shines in sondheim’s “not getting married today” from the musical, “company”. i couldn’t figure out when she breathed during that song. mandy, on the other hand, seemed as though he was trying to sing in a key that was either too low, perhaps so he and ms. lupone could sing together, or too high, where his voice lost much of its power, at times barely projecting more than a whisper. the first act ended with a bit of hilarity as they danced together while gliding around the stage on a pair of rolling chairs, singing a song i had never heard before: “april in fairbanks” from the completely (well evidently ALMOST completely) forgotten “new faces of 1956″.

the second act saw them change strengths. patty sung “evertything’s coming up roses” from the musical “gypsy”. ana and i saw what must have been the 624th revival of this show a few years ago, and even though patty lupone is one of our favorite chanteuses, she did not come within a country mile of the late, great ethel merman. ethel went to school right here in queens, graduating as ethel zimmerman from bryant high school in long island city. the woman had what must have been the most phenominal (not to mention, powerful) voice EVER. she simply did not need a microphone. when she belted out a song, it wasn’t a skinny little leather belt, it was an industrial strength, 12 ply, woven steel and aramid fiber job. her voice was so strong, you could have probably heard her in the next time zone.

they both did great on (naturally) the two songs from “evita”, but the lack of costumes and scenery led to feeling of
disingenuousness, as though they were performing on a late night talk show. i was kind of surprised that they did not sing more songs by sir andrew lloyd weber, until ana reminded me about the famous pissing match that lupone and weber got into after he recast the role of norma desmond in “sunset boulevard” when it moved from the east end to broadway. at least for that one brief, shining moment, the duo sounded like the way they SHOULD sound. over the decades, your brain has been programmed to believe that songs are supposed to sound like the way that you are accustomed to hearing them, and that brings up an interesting point. once you get used to the way something sounds, can any other version top it? can a revival EVER be better than the original? is it possible that a new version can come along and become the new “standard” by which all others are compared? is jose feliciano’s ‘light my fire” better than the original by jim morrison and the doors, or is it SO different that it, in effect, became a new song altogether? we saw patty lupone in “anything goes” a while back. we sat in the second row, and got spit on by the star, while watching her lips warble and her throat vibrate on the sustained notes. it was fantastic! “evita” was one of the first shows we saw together back in the stone age (or so it seemed). we have tickets to see the revivals of “anything goes” with sutton foster, and “evita” with ricky martin. do they stand a chance of surpassing the originals, or are they destined to wind up in the pile entitled “they were ok, but nuthin’ like the real thing, baby.”

the wilpons have finally, mercifully relented to sandy alderson and every heart in the new york metropolitan area that bleeds orange and blue, and put into motion the passing of the “great wall of flushing”. citi field…….the place where home runs go to die. its capacious outfield may have possibly enticed a major league pitcher or two into considering a tenure in queens, but it surely chased many more a hitter. after the debacle that was the signing of jason bay (the man in the empty uniform), sluggers have stayed further away from this ballpark than a mouse at a catnip condominium.

not only did they shorten the dimensions of this expansive park, they have also painted the new fences blue, instead of black. they should have been blue all the time. when joan payton helped form the mets in the beginning of the sixties, it was as a tribute to the two national league teams that had preceeded them, the dodgers, with their blue and white uniforms, and the giants, with their orange and black, that the mets took their colors. citi field has only had (until now) a reimnder of the ghosts that used to patrol the polo grounds. except, of course, the jackie robindson rotunda, which to me would still make more sense in the city of the angels than it does here.

as an added bonus, they have added some seats between the 2 fences, much as they did in boston a few years ago when seats were made available on top of the green monster at fenway park. the seats in the mo-zone will be at field level. i sat there for one game last year and it is a very strange perspective from which to watch a game. in addition, the fences in the outfield will now be a reasonably uniform 8 feet high, instead of the nearly insurmountable 16 feet that it previously towered above left field. the statisticians have determined that the mets, as a team, should hit about 1 more home run per game throughout the season, based on their previous play. of course, the opposing team will naturally have the same advantage, so even though it may help the individual players’ stats a bit (most likely bay and david wright, whose home run numbers precipitously plummeted after the move to the new park at the beginning of the 2009 season), it may not ultimately help the mets’ dismal won and loss record that much, if at all. it should, however, provide slightly more visual excitement for the fans.

truth be told, there were not that many “squeakers” hit at citi field. when they were going, they went. the hardest ball i ever saw hit came off the bat of former milwaukee brewer and present free agent prince fielder this past september. he hit a line drive that was still rising as it smashed into one of the empty (of course) seats in the pepsi porch. when horsehide hit plastic, it sounded like a gunshot. the seat might have been permanently deformed, so great was the force of the collision. in retrospect, it is a good thing the seat WAS empty, otherwise a serious injury, if not outright death might have occurred. on that day, the wall could have been located in berlin and it would not have contained the blast.

ana and i saw harry connick, jr on broadway a few years ago in the revival of the musical “pajama game”. ana (naturally) had seen it before, and she highly recommended it (as she does everything, good, bad and indifferent). i had heard connick before and enjoyed his performance, so i went along and was rewarded by an excellent evening. we had also attended a concert of his a couple of summers ago and a fine time was had by all, so when ana heard that he was going to star in “on a clear day (you can see forever)”, i was all in. we went with our group of the usual suspects to the st. james theater on 44th street. it used to drive me crazy to see these shows because parking in the city can be such a hassle, but since i developed my “system”, it has been one less thing to worry about. of course if you are afraid to leave your car on the street, this system is not for you. most broadway theaters are located between 44th and 47th streets between broadway and 8th avenue. if you drive into the city from queens, time your departure so that you will arrive in manhattan a little after 7p.m. take the midtown tunnel and get into the far right lane once you enter the city. take the eponymous tunnel exit street to 41st and make a left. proceed to third avenvue and make a right. go to the next-to-left lane until you pass 42nd street, thus deftly avoiding all the people turning left. once you pass 42nd, get into the left lane and then turn left onto 45th street. this will take you all the way to the west side. once you cross 5th avenue, look for a parking spot. whatever you do, DO NOT CROSS 6TH AVENUE. from that point on, the traffic is exponentially worse and you can walk faster than you can drive. you will have to put money in the muni-meter, but you will have a short walk to just about any theater, and you will not have to wait forever to pick up your car after the show, as you would if you wimped out and stuck it in a garage for twice the price. of course, this can coome back to bite you on the ass. after the show, we went to shake shack with eva and carlos, but before i could sit down and enjoy danny meyer’s finest, i had to go back to the car to put more money in the muni-meter. since the after show dinner was a spur of the minute decision, i hadn’t put enough time on the muni-meter when i first paid. after midnite, the parking is free, but i had only put enough time until 11:30. it took me only 15 minutes to go to the car, pay, change the stickers and get back to 8th ave and 44th street, and the best part was that i didn’t have to wait for neither the food, nor the table (and got in some good aerobic exercise, to boot).

if you can time your departure even earlier, have i got a deal for you! there is free parking after 7 pm on several of the streets in the theater district west of 8th avenue. the thing is, people get to these spots starting at 6:30 and then just sit in their cars waiting for the “magic hour”, lest they be given a summons from the roving band of assholes known as the brownies. since we parked in a timely manner, we were thus able to leisurely stroll to the theater, where we met up our cohorts. jacob was being babysat by his daughter, jessica, and since his wife was not there to keep an eye on him, he had left his tickets home. he (correctly) assumed that if he hung out with ana, all would be ok. she entered the the theater with the both of them, and breezily pointed over her shoulder to me saying “he has the tickets”. unfortunately (or fortunately) several people got in between us, so that by the time i walked in a few second later with yuval, the usher must have forgotten how many tickets he was supposed to scan as he checked my ticket; especially since i reminded him that he had only scanned the top ticket. therefore, when he checked the second one, he must have gotten confused with the count and everyone was seated without incident.

as the curtain rose, harry connick stands alone on the stage, apparently speaking directly to the audience. as this was just the second preview performance, i thought that he really was talking to the audience about something that had to do with the fact that this was a preview performance, but he was in role, playing a psychiatrist, presenting a case to an audience of shrinks. that was the last understandable part of the show. by the time intermission arrived, we had 10 different opinions among our group of 14 as to what the hell was going on. the other 4 didn’t care. when i go to the theater, the first thing i look for and want in a show is a (understandable) plot, so i was particularly annoyed. the second act proved no less confusing than the first. the best parts of the show were when mr. connick sung. i love the sound of his voice. the phrasing is not quite the same, but to me, he sounds remarkably like a young frank sinatra. given a few more decades of aging and maybe some rum soaked cigars and he might just inherit the position as the next chairman of the board.

single. webster’s dictionary defines it as unique, one of a kind, like no other. which just happens to be the slogan of fairways supermarket. there are fairways on long island, in the city and in red hook brooklyn, but there had not been one in queens. until (appropriately) this sadie hawkins day. just as the eagles said in their song, everybody likes the new kid in town. even if he was a nobody in the last town. i usually go to the fairway in plainview, and unless a major holiday like thanksgiving or super bowl sunday is fast approaching, the stores are usually fairly empty. the new fairway at douglaston was an absolute mob scene. it could not have gotten any more crowded, both in the store and the parking lot, if they were giving the food away for free. which they are not (at least not yet, as far as i could tell). it took 3 trips around the parking lot to find a spot to park. i thought that i would be cute and park on the upper level, where toys ‘r’ us is located. no such luck. they anticipated my move and put elevators in, so you can park on either level without having to climb 3 flights of stairs while carrying multiple bags of heavy groceries. when the holiday shopping season starts in earnest on black friday, i wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near this circus. it took 10 minutes of waiting just to enter the store, as all the “lookie lews” gawked, slack jawed and eyes agog, at the giant piles of vegetables and fruit both inside and outside the main entrance.

all fruit looks pretty much the same on the outside to the novice shopper, but a fruit connoisseur will be able to pick better fruit, more consistently. summer fruit is easier to pick than winter fruit, but with practice you can have success with the winter fruit (and i’m not counting the fruit from chile as winter fruit, because it grows in the summer down there and the same rules apply to buying chilean fruit that apply to summer fruit up here). of course, not all winter fruit comes from chile. after many years of experimenting, i can now name the country of origin of any particular piece of fruit just from the taste of the pesticide on its surface. with apples, the fujis are the easiest to pick; just take a sniff. strawberries (toby’s favorite) are picked the same way. if you buy strawberries and your car doesn’t smell like strawberry concentrate by the time you get home (even if you put them in plastic bags in the trunk) the strawberries are not going to have any taste. i love shopping in fairway because they have a description of how the fruit should taste right above the fruit itself. it is a handy guide if you have never eaten that particular kind of fruit before. pears and oranges are pretty easy to pick. all pears ripen and become very sweet. they are so inexpensive and sweet that chances are if you drink any beverage that lauds itself as 100% fruit juice, pear juice will be at or near the top of the list of ingredients. oranges are another matter. my favorite are the navel oranges. to pick good navel oranges heft them. they should feel relatively heavy for their size. at all costs, avoid the very lightweight ones. these will be “mealy” and dry. the stippling of the peel doesn’t really make that much of a difference with oranges, but it makes a big difference with grapefruit. grapefruit is now verboten in our house, as it should be in any home where someone who takes a statin for cholesterol. as we get older, it seems that new medicines are added to our daily regimen with annoying regularity. we have therefore invented what we like to call the “trinity cocktail”. it will have the 3 most popular medicines in one easy to swallow tablet. despite the rise of both obesity and diabetes, heart disease has remained at or near the top in adult maladies, so we start with a statin combined with a low dose aspirin so you don’t drop dead from a myocardial infarction. next (how appropriately) we add nexium to counteract the effects of acid reflux. how is it that so many people have acid reflux nowadays? years ago, a lot of people had heartburn, but it never killed anyone. now they tell you that prolonged acid reflux can cause barrett’s esophagus, which is a precursor of esophageal cancer. it’s gonna take more than an occasional tums for this. i had an experience much like that of buddy hackett, the famed catskills comedian when he joined the army and stopped eating his mother’s cooking. my mother (and her mother who lived with us) were fairly heavy handed when it came to seasoning our food (especially with the garlic). when i got married, and ana and i started preparing our own food, i had the strangest sensation after meals. when ana asked me what the matter was, i replied (as did buddy hackett to the army doctor) “the fire went out”.

it seems to me that good grapefruits should have thin skin with very tiny stippling. for any given size of grapefruit, the thicker the skin, the less of the fruit there will be. my family always had a piece of fruit as an appetizer with our dinner. during the winter, it was grapefruit and during the summer, it was cantaloupe. cantaloupes are among the hardest fruits to pick. i have used heft, smell, squeeze, scratch but it seems to always turn out to be a crapshoot. sometimes you get lucky, sometimes not. honeydews are much more predictable. they should be pliant to the touch and should have a “yellowish” as opposed to a “whitish” tinge to the skin. watermelons can be played like a bongo until you hear one that sounds hollow. again, heft them to make sure they are juicy, not mealy. with rasberries, blackberries and blueberries, turn the package upside down. there should be no wet, moldy berries. the companies that sell the berries know this and now they have started putting an absorbent sheet on the bottom of the package to prevent you from seeing what those bottom berries look like. try to avoid these if possible.

oranges and grapefruit can be a real pain to peel unless you follow some simple rules. first of all, keep them at room temperature. they will taste sweeter at 68 degrees than they will at 40 degrees. they will also be much easier to peel when they are warmer. you need a sharp knife. cut 2 circumferential incisions halfway through the peel at 90 degrees to one another. this will make the orange look as though you were going to cut in into quarters. using the knife, “start” one of the quarters and it should peel away from the fruit with the white pulpy stuff still attached, leaving you a nice clean piece of fruit that is ready to eat, and if done properly, your hands will not even be sticky. they may be a little greasy from the natural oils in the orange skin, though. as science becomes more and more adroit at hybridizing, cross breeding and outright cloning, the variety of oranges seems to grow each year. we never saw mineolas before 1977, and clementines made their first appearance in the eighties. the problem with these “new” fruits is that they are great when they first appear, but after a while, when growers other than the originator of the variety starts growing them, the gene pool inevitably becomes polluted and the fruit becomes less and less tasty as the years go by.

the summer fruits should have what i call “sugar spots” on them. combined with hefting them, these spots will be a good indicator that the fruit will nicely ripen into a juicy sweetness. peaches, nectarines and plums can be chosen this way. apricots always become sweet if you let them ripen long enough. that is the hardest part, though. especially when they ripen and start to smell so delicious that you just can’t wait. in “the 2000 year old man”, mel brooks was quoted as saying “i’d rather have a rotten nectarine than” some other fruit. i agree with him. i like fruit when it is at its ripest. i never eat fruit when it’s green. i leave that up to my son philip and my cousin brett. that is why it is so difficult to find ripe fruit in my house. it is usually eaten way before it ever gets a chance to become ripe. ana is always making fun of me for eating what she calls rotten fruit. i always try to buy a “mix” of fruit; some ready to eat, others that need a little ripening. to ana, these “ready to eat” pieces are “ready to be thrown away”.

usually, one of the fun parts of shopping at fairway is the selection of freebies that they always seem to be handing out. like costco, if you go there at around lunchtime, you might be full by the time you leave without spending a dime. they have selection of about a dozen different types of olive oil, always available with slices of french bread nearby for dipping (please don’t double dip). the cheese department always has nibbles of their famous parmigiana regiano, and there are many varieties of olives to test before you make you final decision. when ana and i first started frequenting the fairway on 74th street and broadway, we used to buy olives, cheese, bread and freshly squozen orange juice and have a mini picnic right in the car.

as you explore any fairway, take a whiff as you pass the coffee department (the aroma is wonderful, even if you don’t like coffee). the cheese department smells like the foot of god. try out the appetizing department, which can go toe to toe with both zabar’s and barney greengrass in terms of both variety and quality of the goods. the fresh (never frozen) meat is showcased under a special kind of lighting that makes it look mouth wateringly delicious, instead of like, well….the mouldy raw meat they have showcased under regular florescent lights in the windows of gallagher’s steak house on 49th street. my father in law taught me how to buy meat. there should be an even, white coating of fat around the piece of meat, but it preferably should not be more than about 3/16ths of an inch thick, otherwise you are wasting your money buying fat. the correct amount will help to seal in the juices as the meat cooks, as ther residual fat practically disappearing in the process. there should also be a white “marbling” throughout the body of the meat. any piece of meat that looks like a chunk of lean muscle will probably have the texture of a well cooked volleyball unless you cook it for a long time in liquid. this will break down the fibres and make even the toughest, cheapest cuts of meat tender enough to cut with a fork. fairway’s fish is presented on cracked ice (divided into 2 sections….kosher and non kosher, so you don’t have to worry about cross contamination) and always smells fresh, instead of like the supermarkets near my house where the fish looks old and dry, like those in the cartoons with the “X”s for eyes. it must be a cultural thing, because i have been to some of these markets where the fish is displayed with the heads of the fish cut in half (brain side outward) and covered in blood. this prompted my brother in law, izzy, to ask the manager of one of these stores “what do you do with the edible parts?” izzy has now been banned for life from these stores (which i cannot mention by name, only by initial.) we love the chilean sea bass they sell at fairway. it is easier to cook the sea bass as steaks rather than as fillets, though, because the steaks are the same thickness throughout. the fillets are tapered and cook unevenly. this holds true for all types of fish, except for the “mild, white, flaky” fish that so many people who don’t really like fish eat. the most popular example of this type of fish, sole, is the “iceburg lettuce” of the fish world. bland and inoffensive, but with minimal nutritional value and taste. that said, i am reminded of the opening scene in the movie “julie and julia”, where meryl streep, portraying julia child, is making a fried filet of sole that is so mouth wateringly realistic looking, it makes you want to gobble up the screen. usually, however, the oilier, greasier and essentially fishier the fish is, the better it is for you. all those stinky oils have the highest concentration of those famous omega 3′s. a rule of thumb to follow is that with any food, the higher the level of pigmentation, the better the food is for you. that is why beets and pomegranates are better for you than lettuce and cucumbers.

our search eventually took us to the dregs of dog society…..the dog pound. this is where the canine equivalents of halfway houses and homeless shelters hung out (and yet still managed to smell better than their human counterparts). as we walked through the myriad rows of canus derelictus, we spotted some dogs that were sleeping, some that growled at the mere approach of a person, some chasing their tails and others biting their feet. suddenly, i passed a dog who looked up at me with an almost human countenance. i looked closer at him, and his chest seemed to swell with pride as he showed his best side, just like mariah carey. i looked at him and he returned my gaze, steady and confident. as i leaned closer to the cage, he whispered in sotto voce “how ya doin?”. aghast, i leaned back, but when my shock subsided, i drew closer again. this time, he said in an almost plaintive voice “ya gotta get me outa’ here!”. i quickly summoned the rest of the family over, but he didn’t say anything else. when i called one of the attendants over, i looked up at the dog’s cage number and asked if she could tell me all that she could about the dog in cage number 99. “oh, 99 is a happy dog. 99 is a friendly dog” she answered enthusiastically. and so, the name stuck. most people think his name was derived from maxwell smart’s partner, as played by barbara feldon, but now you know…..the rest of the story. in fact, he was one of the (very) few dogs who had a “do not destroy” sign on his cage. that meant that if nobody adopted him within a couple of weeks, one of the personnel at the pound was going to bring him home. the four of us figured he looked friendly enough, but with small children at home, i had to put him to “the acid test”. i do not recommend that anyone do this, but i was young and stupid, so i stuck my hand through the bars of the cage and into the dog’s mouth. much to my (and especially ana’s) relief, the dog started wretching and choking on my hand. i withdrew the dripping appendage from his jaws and we decided then and there that we had found our next dog!

this was on a saturday, and we had to wait a couple of days for all the paperwork to be done, so ana was assigned the task of returning on monday and pick the dog up. she drove out to wantagh again, signed what needed signing and gingerly led the new dog to the car. once ana opened the door to our jeep, he jumped right into the passenger seat without the least bit of coaxing. she was a little reluctant to drive with a strange animal in the seat right next to her, but he seemed content to just sit and watch the sights go by as they headed back home. then ana noticed that he had started to move a little closer to her with each passing mile. she started to get really nervous as he inched past the center console, drawing nearer and nearer. as he moved, so did she, until she was driving with her head practically sticking out the driver’s window; kind of like…..a dog. finally there was no place left to go and the dog put his head right on her leg as he said greatfully “you saved me. thank you”. it’s a good thing i had told ana about his predeliction for diction, otherwise she might have been scared half to death as he gratefully uttered those words. from that moment on, he was ana’s dog and it became very common to hear him speak. whoever was around just “helped” him get the words out, but no matter who did (and there were LOTS of helpers) his voice pretty much sounded the same.

he had a bad habit of running away when we first got him. toby used to go to junior congregation on saturday mornings back then. we were at work, so we didn’t hear about the adventure 99 had that day. it seems that 99 escaped shortly after toby left the house that morning. imagine toby’s surprise, when into his hebrew school class who should walk in, but…..99. the teacher asked if anyone knew the gray dog in the doorway and toby sheepishly raised his hand. he stayed the rest of the morning and the 2 of them returned home later, none the worse for the wear. another time 99 ran away and we didn’t see him for a whole day. the next morning we got a phone call, saying that 99 had been picked up by the local animal control officer (dog catcher) and that he was currently in the canine equivalent of the “big house”, the port washington dog pound. i made arangemnts to come spring him the next day, as they were closing when i got the call. the funny thing about it was that 99, as usual, was sans leash and or collar, therefore, how did the n.c.a.c.o. know to call US? again, the only possible explanation was that 99 must have told him. the next morning, i arrived and 99 is playing his “prisoner” role to the max; scraping his water dish back and forth along the bars of his cell, er, cage, and basically making a general racket. when i asked him what was going on, he said that he hadn’t eaten since the morning before. i immediately got rather angry at the hapless guard, who guaranteed that he had, in fact, given the dog food along with all the other residents. when i presented this to 99, he just answered “but that was DOG food”. what a primma dogga.

one thing that we learned after having 99 live with us for a few years was that he was basically a dishonest chicken. he always said he was brave, bragging about other dogs that he had vanquished (his words, not mine), but whenever he came across another dog in the street, he always talked the talk, but NEVER walked the walk. one day, we were walking through the neighborhood in the late fall. the temperature had started dropping during the evenings and people had started getting their in-ground sprinkler systems winterized. to “winterize” the systems, compressed air had to be forced through the tubes, forcing any water in the lines out, so that it couldn’t freeze and crack the pipes. the sound of the air rushing out of the pipes created a very loud hissing noise. as 99 and i walked down the block, he was singing “bad” by michael jackson, as a kind of warning to other denizens of the block (both the 2 and 4 legged varieties) that he was, in fact, bad. just as he finished the second verse, a very loud hissing noise started right behind us. quick as a wink, 99 jumped up in my arms, and attached himself to my sweater with his extended claws as he mewled “help me, it’s a snake; it’s going to eat me; please help me”. after a few minutes he finally released his grip as i repeatedly explained that, in reality, there was no snake and that he was not in any danger. as he gingerly let go and dropped to the ground, he straightened his haunches out and said as he looked around, just in case there was anyone listening or watching “i knew that; i was trying to protect YOU”.

tona has been with us for more than a quarter century, so she knows where the bodies are buried in our family, so to speak. she had a rather adversarial relationship with 99. for some reason, he did not like her, but he needed her to feed and walk him when nobody else was home to do it. i used to drive tona home after i got home from work. she always walked and fed him before she left for the day. once, as i drove her to the train station, i innocently asked her if she had fed 99 that evening and of course she answered in the affirmative. stirring the pot, so to speak, i then said that 99 had told me that she, in fact, had NOT fed him that night. without thinking, she immediately cried out in spanish “he’s lying”. and so, 99′s reputation as somewhat less than a paragon of veracity was born. this was just a single case, but as the years wore on, we found that 99 had a real penchant for tall tales. he firmly believed in reincarnation, and would regale us for hours with tales of his former lives.

an even more vehement battle of words (sometimes escalating into fisticuffs) involves opponents locked in mortal combat over which chocolate syrup is best: hershey’s, u-bet, or a host of lesser known, but still quite tasty competitors. whoever was originally quoted as saying “chocolate is like sex; when it’s good, it’s amazing. when it’s not so good, it’s still pretty good” hit the nail on the head. i think that rodney king said it second best. “why can’t we all just get along?” think of chocolate as a tool. we use different ones for different purposes. when you are on the go and need a fix of chocolate milk, nestles’ nesquick is the next best thing to homemade. it is, in fact, much better than adding plain old nestles quick to a glass of whole milk at home. i still can’t figure out how they make nesquick so thick and creamy; especially with low fat milk. you must drink nesquick when it is ICE cold; otherwise that creaminess takes on the consistency of kaopectate. nestles’ candy, however, has never appealed to me, especially the crunch bar with the “rice crispies” built in. i prefer nuts in my chocolate, not noisy breakfast cereal. that is why snickers will always be more popular in trick or treaters’ bags than milky way bars, unless you freeze them, which levels the playing field (and is a boone for the dental profession as a whole). if you ARE home, and want to make the best chocolate milk, nothing beats ovaltine. OVALTINE? yes, the addition of malt to the chocolate gives the milk a depth and complexity that plain chocolate syrup cannot even approach.

nowadays when you walk into any place that supposedly sells “malts and shakes”. you ask for a malted and you get a shake. don’t these people realize there is supposed to be malt in a malted? for those of us brave enough to make a malted at home (not recommended unless you are in the later stages of anorexia), carnation makes a malt powder that you add to the milk, syrup and ice cream that are the other ingredients in a real, live malted. i lived on union street in crown heights, brooklyn as a small child. when my father wanted to treat me to a frosty, cold malted on a hot summer day, he used to take me to gus’ luncheonette, on franklin avenue, across the street from parkway cleaners. there could be no air conditioning in a laundry/dry cleaning store because we generated our own steam. i don’t think ANYTHING was air-conditioned back then except movie theaters. so when the temperature advanced from “hatch an egg in your hand” hot to “fry an egg on your car” hot, my father would take a quick break. if i happened to be close by (and we literally DID live right around the corner from the store), i went along with him. i remember the anticipation of hearing the hamilton beach mixer as it hummed, combining the ingredients gus had put in the tall stainless cup. when it finished, he would pour the thick mixture from the mixmaster cup into 2 coke glasses. the remainder would make the outside of the metal vessel sweat, as the luncheonette was not air conditioned either. as a drop or 2 of this condensate ran down the sides of the metal cup in perfect synchronicity with the sweat on our faces, we sighed in relief when the first taste of the icy sweet nectar hit our tongues.

if you are going to have ice cream, and do it right, the only way to go is with a banana split. vanilla and strawberry scoops are there for color and are the featured players, but the star is the scoop of chocolate ice cream and the hershey’s syrup upon it. yes, there may be banana slices, chopped nuts, a cherry and even whipped cream, but you know the chocolate scoop is going to disappear first. somehow, hershey’s chocolate syrup and chocolate ice cream is a combo that’s hard to beat. hershey’s makes the aboslute best chocolate candy as well. i’m not sophisticated enough to appreciate the 78% cocoa in the ghiradelli squares. they just taste bitter to me. i like milk chocolate better than dark chocoalte. the only really good dark chocoale is in either a peter paul mounds, or even better, the joyva jelly rings we eat during passover. they are actually available during the entire year, but since there are so many other varieties of chocolate during the other 51 weeks of the year, the jelly rings are relegated to also-ran status. but during passover, they are the stars. the rest of the “chocolates” that one may consume during passover are so bad, they usually quietly repose there in the “shit” drawer (where we keep all our candy), until a bonafide chocolate emergency rears its ugly head. this happens when you are jonesing for chocolate so bad, that you will actually eat that crap that you swore you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole just weeks before.

of course, the best chocolate ice cream is FREE chocolate ice cream. there used to be an ice cream parlor called jahn’s that gave you free ice cream if it was your birthday. the mother of all jahn’s ice cream offerings was the “kitchen sink”. seven scoops, seven toppings. ana and i ordered one at the queens boulevard store when were were going out for about a year. we couldn’t even come close to finishing it. all you had to do was show them your driver’s license. alas, jahn’s is no longer in existance, having gone out of business around the same time that acquiring fake i.d.’s became successful on a large scale. one wonders if there was a connection. to get free ice cream these days, you have to register with the retailer. i have my name listed with baskin and robbins and cold stone creamerie. i never miss a yearly opportunity, either. every once in a while, even though it’s not my birthday, i go to baskin robbins. when i was younger, my favorite flavors used to be rocky road and french vanilla (it used to cost 3 cents more per scoop). now, it’s usually jamoca almond fudge. i literally will not go to a coldstone unless they give it away. their ice cream has no taste, and it is ridiculously expensive.

then there is fox’s u-bet. this is the kind of chocolate syrup my nana used to have in her house and my grandfather used to make egg creams. for the uninitiated, an egg cream contains neither eggs, nor cream. it is composed of the perfect combination of chocolate syrup (for a genuine egg cream, the syrup MUST be u-bet), milk and seltzer. when i say “seltzer”, i mean seltzer in the gas charged blue or green pump bottles. club soda or “seltzer” from a can or bottle just won’t do. here is why. to make the perfect egg cream, you first place the milk in a tall glass, then SHOOT the seltzer in. this will cause the frothy white foam you are looking for. the cans or bottles do not produce enough pressure to produce the coveted foam. then carefully pour a thin stream of the u-bet THROUGH the foam. next mix, with the midpoint of a long spoon at the level of the foam. in this way, the foam does not become “contaminated” by the chocolate. your reward will be dark, chocolaty, highly carbonated milk with a pristine white foam head. there is, as of this writing, only one place in the city that one may obtain such a mythical concoction. sammy’s romanian steak house, on chrystie street hearkens back to the glory days of the lower east side. back in the 50′s and 60′s, my family used to travel to this historical neighborhood on winter weekends so my mother could purchase yard at the bell yarn store on essex street. i can still smell the smoking pushcarts on the streets, selling freshly roasted chestnuts and sweet potatoes. my mother used to knit all kinds of clothes for the whole family. shortly before she passed away, she had made me a sweater. i think that she must have been paying more attention to the t.v. show she had been watching as she knitted, rather than the knitting itself, because when i tried the sweater on, the sleeves were at least a foot too long (each).

we found out about sammy’s when we lived in atlanta. one of our teachers at emory dental school told us about it, and asked us to look for his card if and when we went there. it took several tries, but we did eventually find his business card. the walls are lined with grease covered business cards placed there by patrons since the restaurant opened. it is not a kosher restaurant, even though the font of the letters in the sign outside look hebraic in origin. no, it is “kosher style’. in other words, the kind of ashkenazi, eastern european food that i grew up with. if your physician ever tells you that you have a cholesterol deficiency, THIS is the place to cure it. for appetizers, they offer a plate of chopped liver, made with onions fried in chicken fat MIXED with liquid chicken fat right at the table. they have syrup bottles that look like they were pilfered from an ihop filled with the golden “schmaltz” on each table (in case you need a little extra). there is a card printed with a brief explanation of several important yiddish terms on the table, as well as a bowl full of garlic infused pickles, tomatoes and peppers, lest you be molested by vampires during the following week or two. for the main course, you can order anything my nana used to cook, even puppicks. puppicks mean belly buttons in yiddish, but in terms of food, they are chicken gizzards; a rubbery, chewy organ that the chicken uses to grind up its food after swallowing it along with small stones and pebbles it pecks up (the stones are removed before cooking). my nana used to make them fricasseed, in a light tomato sauce and that is the way sammy’s serves them as well. puppicks are a love it or hate it kind of food. ana won’t even try one; the only other person i know that likes them is my buddy george. i guess it is something that you have to eat as a kid, before you know anything about avian anatomy. i loved sammy’s as soon as i entered. it smelled just like my nana’s basement (see sounds and smells). in addition to the aforementioned fricasse, my favorite entree has got to be the skirt steak. it comes on a large, oval plate and hangs over the edges of the plate. for several inches. on each side. it is an orgy of beef on a plate. they have live entertainment on weekends (yiddish vaudeville lives!) and you can order a variety of unhealthy side dishes (the kasha varnichkes are almost as good as mrs. g’s), but you have to wait for dessert for the true piece de resistance. they put a bottle of seltzer (the real stuff, just like it used to be delivered to our door by lennie, the seltzerman!) on the table, along with a bottle of u-bet and a half gallon container of milk. this is the principle reason why it cannot be a true kosher restaurant. yes, you can make egg creams right at your table; as many as you want. if you are a novice, they will walk you through the process; if you are an “eggspert” (with my apologies to vincent price) they leave you to your own devices. they will keep bringing you more milk, syrup and seltzer as long as you obey one cardinal rule. no seltzer fights. alas, we are not allowed in sammy’s any more for breaking this rule and even thought i cannot mention the name of the person who was responsible for this, her initials are a.n.a.

an oxymoron is a seeming contradiction of terms, and as such is inherently confusing. there is no confusion, however, concerning the frozen hot chocolate served at serendipity’s. it’s the best thing to drink after a day of ice skating at wollman’s rink during the winter months. we discovered a different kind of frozen hot chocolate on opening day at shea stadium in 2003. the mets had just acquired free agent and long time nemesis tom glavine. glavine, along with fellow aces maddux and smoltz formed the pitching troika for the dreaded atlanta braves for years. he was supposed to give the mets a chance to get back to the world series after losing to the yankees in the subway series in 2000. on opening day, the temperature hovered at a frigid 34 degrees, with (as always in shea) a stiff wind blowing in off the water of flushing bay. we had to huddle toether just to keep from freezing. since ana didn’t care about the game, she volunteered (with some coaxing from the rest of us) to go get hot chocolate and bring it back to the seats. she was gone for almost 2 innings (i think she was hiding inside somewhere) and when she returned, we had several cups of……frozen hot chocolate. glavine came up awful that day, earning the loss as the mets fell 15-2.

speaking of the hot chocolate available in baseball stadia in the city, i must cast my vote in favor of that sold at yankee stadium. yes, it is more expensive, and they give you slightly less, but it is thick, creamy and intense. the dunkin’ donuts variety sold at citi field is thin, watery and tastes artificial, somehow.

in every endeavour, there are some who make it to the big leagues and there are others that are forever relegated to remain in the minors. in most cases, little is known about these also-rans, but for the sake of completeness, i add the following. if you watched t.v. during the 60′s (see soundtrack of our lives) you would have a favorite chocolate syrup depending on which children’s shows you liked. if, like me, you were a fan of the channel 11 after school lineup, you would urge your mother to buy bosco, since they advertised on wpix. george costanza must have watched channel 11, because, as we all now know, “bosco” was his secret a.t.m. password. if you watched claude kirschner’s “terrytoon circus” on wor, channel 9, you opted for coca-marsh instead. the very first batch of marvel comics cartoons were shown on channel 9 in 1966 as well. by then their chocolate allegence had switched to pdq chocolate flavored beads. one final honorable mention is (are) those straws that had the chocolate flavouring built right into the brown spiral running along their length. you just had to pump the straw up and down to release the (pretty crappy, now that i think about it) chocolate flavor into your milk.

the man who had run out of the elevator had left something behind. and it STUNK. he must have feasted on the decomposing carcass of a dead animal and then washed it down with rotten eggs and a chaser of spoiled milk. the malodorous miasma of leftover digestive gasses in that elevator could have fallen an ox, much less an ordinary homo sapiens, but i was late and did not have the luxury of waiting for another elevator. i tried not to breathe as the soothing sounds of easy listening music played in the background, turning this horror into a surrealistic scene from a fellini movie. i pressed myself as far as possible into the back wall of the cab, facing forward (as elevator etiquette dictates), mentally trying to speed up the cadaverously smelling car. then things went from bad to worse.

the doors opened on the 4th floor and a beautiful hispanic woman entered, a pleasant smile on her face. the smile quickly disappeared as soon as she realized what was happening. she tried to get out, but it was too late. the doors had closed. i never saw what floor she was going to, because she turned in my direction with a wrinkled up nose, her face now an ugly mask of outrage and disgust. in a voice filled with loathing and dripping with contempt, she practically spat the word out at me, enunciating each syllable clearly. “co-CHI-no”! it means pig in spanish, but the way she said it implied so much more; my upbringing, my morality, and of course, my obvious lack of any civility towards my fellow man (or woman). she then hit all the buttons as quickly as she could before i could explain that the cloud of stench was there when i got on. as soon as the doors opened on the next available floor, she ran out, turned around to look at me again with a venomous stare and violently shook her head from side to side (whether to mean “no!, no!, no!” or just to get some fresh, clean air i wasn’t sure), then gave me one last look of revulsion as the doors closed once again.

now i was really late and could only hope and pray that no-one else would enter the odiferous otis. i finally reached the 12th floor and left the lethal lift behind, gasping for breath and hoping that the overpowering putridity wouldn’t stick to me. i ran down the hall and entered the office, panting and sweaty. the receptionist eyed me suspiciously (could she smell it?) and then told me that the person conducting the interview would be there shortly, as she had been delayed. i was asked to make myself comfortable, and a few minutes later, i was led into the room where my interviewer awaited. my heart sank as i gazed upon her; the woman from the elevator. she had automatically started to rise with her hand extended just as she recognized me and withdrew her hand as if it had been spring loaded. again, she hissed in spanish “co-CHI-no!” sensing an obviously hopeless situation, i didn’t bother sticking around. i just turned around and left, pausing long enough at the door to say “it wasn’t me”.

it is said that miami is the 6th borough of new york city, and it’s not hard to see why. dade county, and its nearby northern relative, fort lauderdale, is (and has been) the retirement mecca for new yorkers sick and tired of the snow, the crime and the smog for decades. in florida, they can look forward to their golden years, only having to worry about skin cancer, making the early bird on time and getting run over by an errant golf cart. before we checked in at the carrilon hotel on collins ave., we decided that getting a bite to eat might be a good idea, as we hadn’t eaten anything since we received our “meal” on the plane at around the original “takeoff time” the night before. looking back on it, we should have been grateful. nowadays, you are lucky if you get a microscopic bag of pretzels to sate your ravenous hunger as you while away the hours on the tarmac, reading “skymall” over and over until even the ADS from omaha steaks and the churrascaria begin to look good enough to cram in your mouth.

after a general consensus, we decided on going to wolfies, a quasi-new york style deli/diner further down collins ave. they had enough variety on the menu so that everyone could at least pick something that they thought they might like; kind of like a prototypical chesseburger factory (and right in the same neighborhood, no less). my parents and sister wisely chose breakfast fare, but somehow my eye became fixated on the corned beef hash. i had never eaten it before, but the illustration looked SO GOOD. this is an excellent example of “never order food by its picture on the menu”, also known as the “bowling alley lettuce” warning. the sodden mass of flecks of meat, surrounded by a gelatinous miasma of whatever the hell else was in that steaming pile was just this side of inedible, appetite be damned. of course, this led a to a litany of complaints from my mother, who never hesitated to use any of her favorite gripes about me, such as “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” and “you just look at the price, not the food”. neither could have been further from the truth. first of all, i was but a lad of 16 years old, and did not yet comprehend anything about the cost (or value) of things; i never looked at the price (much to my father’s consternation, when i invariably ordered (or WANTED to order) lamb chops from a menu every chance i got, plus the fact that i was so hungry when i ordered the hash, if it had been even CLOSE to not being thoroughly repulsive, i would have finished off 2 plates-full of the slop. i did manage to choke down enough mouthfulls to quell the embarrassing noises emanating from my digestive tract as we walked back to the hotel.

it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day, so we all figured we should get out to the beach. this way, when we returned to new york, we would have our requisite tans perfected. in retrospect, this was not a great idea. as soon as i lied down in the warm sun, i immediately fell sound asleep, and as i hadn’t slept the entire night before, i STAYED asleep. all day. in the florida sun. parental supervision had not yet been as perfected then as it is now, so when my parents did not see hide nor hair of me for the next 8 hours or so, they must have thought “what trouble can a 16 year old get into?” the short answer to that would be “sun poisoning”. by the time i awoke at around 5:30 that afternoon, my back was pretty well blistered and i was in agony. after a short visit to the infirmary in the hotel (where nothing much was done) i was released to “enjoy” the rest of the vacation, with the caveat that i stay out of the sun. just what i wanted to hear on vacation. in florida. if nothing else, i am a compliant patient, so i did what i was told. as a result, the days of my vacation were a wash, but the evenings were great! the hotels back then had headline acts to entice the northerners, and the carrrilon had some of the best! during the week we were at the hotel, santana, fresh from woodstock, was appearing, as were diana ross and the supremes AND the temptations. the best show of the week was when both motown groups were on the same stage, singing “i’m gonna make you love me”. the shows were great, because they played the same songs that were we currently listening to on the radio.

it was at the santana show that i met nancy. they played “soul sacrifice” and “evil ways”. she was from hicksville and was in miami staying with her grandparents, who had a condo on the beach. at 16, i had absolutely no idea what a condo was, but was amazed to find that her grandparents actually LIVED there. all year! to me, florida had always seemed be a vacation destination, not a place where real peole actually lived and worked. this was like finding out someone lived full time aboard one of the ships in the pirates of the carribean ride at disney world (which did not yet exist, but you get the idea). i have chronicled before how smooth i was with the ladies at this age (see thespians and lesbians) and this was no different. the highlight of my entire vacation was when, as we walked along the water one (overcast) day, i reached out to hold her hand and she did not withdraw it in total disgust! from that moment on, we (and our hands) were inseparable. we attended the shows in the hotel every night and she even gave me her (real!) new york phone number and asked me to call her when we returned to our respective homes. i could not wait to get back to new york.

unfortunately, she was 15, i was 16 and neither of us drove. we lived way too far apart to walk, and the public transportation system in nassau county is woefully inadequate. we had to rely on one of our parents driving to each other’s house, and then the other parent picking one of us up. not exactly conducive to romance, but what the hell did i care? she LIKED me!
the trips back and forth were endless, especially when her mother drove. this woman must have learned how to drive by watching old movies, where the scenery rolls past the driver as he (or she) saws the wheel back and forth, back and forth. as if this constant side to side motion was not enough to get you carsick (and believe me, it was), she also had a penchant for alternately stepping on the brake and the gas in rapid succession, so by the time we reached our destination in hicksville, we were both the same shade of avacado green as the appliances in her kitchen. i can still remember those few blissful encounters in her basement, holding hands as we listened to simon and garfunkle as her sister valery watched us like a hawk.

her father, along with her aunt, owned a pair of shoe stores, both named “pic ‘n’ pac”; one in patchogue and one in lynbrook. when i mentioned one day that i was looking for work that summer, her father generously offered me a job in the lynbrook store. it was only a 10 minute drive from my house in woodmere (or 20 minutes by bike), so it seemed an ideal way to spend the summer. without my even asking, he offered me a salary of 2 dollars an hour! nancy was going to be in sleep-away camp that summer, so i didn’t have anything better to do, anyway. the first day of work, nancy’s aunt anabell showed me where all the inventory was located in the back room and how to ring up sales on the ancient manual register. this store was definitely NOT a high end operation. the shoes they sold in the store ranged from bargain sandals at $2.99 to the “top of the line” popagallo shoes, which sold at the princely sum of $7.99. just for the record (and to give you an idea of the clientelle) i never did sell a single pair of popagallos.

the main problem was with the quality of the shoes. i think this is when the taiwanese shoe industry first getting a foot in the american sales door (pun intended). the shoes were not just poorly made, they were total garbage. one day, nancy’s dad bragged to me of how he got a special closeout on sandals at a ridiculously low price, and that even at a selling price of $2.99, he would still make a handsome profit. WRONG! just a couple of days after the shoes went on sale, the customers started returning them. in pieces. this continued for a while until he solved the mystery. the shoes he had bought at such a low cost were not supposed to be worn by live people. they were supposed to be put on corpses when they were buried! the shoes were held together with hot glue. a live person’s body heat, combined with the hot, summer lynbrook sidewalks, melted the glue and the shoes came apart while being worn. it’a a good thing this didn’t happen nowadays, otherwise i’m sure some shyster lawyer would have started a class action lawsuit against the owners.

the store was located on atlantic avenue in lynbrook, right acroos the street from a large bank. for the majority of the day, the store was virtually empty. i spent many hours listening to the radio. the hits playing that summer were “band of gold” by fried payne and “close to you” byt he carpenters. mungo jerry’s seminal summer hit “in the summertime” was released, as was the zombies’ “time of the season”. every time i hear one of these songs now, it brings me right back to pic ‘n’ pac (see sounds and smalls). in fact, customers were so few and far in between, i used the idle hours to learn how to build heathkit electronic equipment. there was always a soldering iron left on behind the counter with component parts, metal chassis and instruction booklets scattered about. however, as noon time came around, and the bank’s personell were freed for lunch, there was usually a stampede across the street. a horde of women converged on the store, all demanding that i help them first because they were on lunch break (as if i didn’t know). they took hundreds of shoes off the racks, trying on multiple pairs at the same time, but never actually buying anything. as soon as 12:55 rolled around, there would be another stampede across the street, but in the opposite direction. i was left with the store in shambles. shoes, boxes, plastic “shoe foolers” (you know, those things that fit inside the shoe, “fooling” it into thinking someone is wearing it when no-one actually is) and those annoying pieces of tissue paper were scattered about, everywhere. it’s just as well that nobody usually showed up afterwards, because it usually took the rest of the day just to put everything back where it belonged; only to have to do the same thing the next day. it was kind of like the fable where the guy rolls a rock up a hill, only to watch in frustration as it rolls back down again and again.

my salary was 16 dollars a day, and because the store usually pulled in an average of around 35 dollars a day, it was not to long before the fate of pic ‘n’ pac went the way of the romance between me and nancy. kaput.