Eatin' Out: Little Giant

85 Orchard @ Broome St
212-226-5047
I had one fantastic meal here on Friday night with Ms. O'Connor. As per my favorite style of eating, we had 5 appetizers/small dishes instead of 2 main courses, lingering over the creative combinations of tastes while stuffing our faces for almost 3 hours. The chestnut soup was swirled with nutmeg, creating a meld of flavors that still has me smacking my lips days later thinking about it. Roasted baby brussel sprouts with maple syrup were perfect. A huge portion of chicken liver mousse served with mache, onion-fig compote and hazelnuts tempted me to put the extra in my bag for a snack later. The beet salad with sauteed beet greens and Humboldt Fog cheese, and the endive salad were fresh and gorgeous, and a three-cheese plate of female-made American artisanal cheeses plus a glass of Fonseca finished off a really amazing meal.

Reservations recommended.

Another Reason Brooklyn Rules

People at my work who live in the city: at the office today.
People at my work who live in Brooklyn (4 total): SNOWDAY!!

I don't buy for ONE second that New Yorkers are full of good cheer, and possessed by a "We are all in this together!" spirit while humping it 6 miles through Brooklyn in 25 degree weather. Still -- thumbs up to the transit strike and god bless the Internet for allowing me to work from home.

The Not So Cold, Hard Facts of Life

I love when the newspaper spells something wrong, or messes up their facts. Perhaps it makes me feel smart - but my, it's sometimes DAMN funny. For example:

Best Porn Errors, as recounted in Mediaweek:
Fairchild Publications, publisher of Jane and Modern Bride, announced it will pull some 200,000 copies of YM Your Prom off newsstands after Studio 17, a prom-dress advertiser, mistakenly printed a child-porn Web site address in two of its six ad pages. Fairchild had put a total of 680,000 copies on newsstand in late December, but an estimated 75 percent had already been sold.

Correction of the Year from the Denver Daily News:
The Denver Daily News would like to offer a sincere apology for a typo in Wednesday’s Town Talk regarding New Jersey’s proposal to ban smoking in automobiles. It was not the author’s intention to call New Jersey ‘Jew Jersey.’

A full list of these fun-and-games is here.

Casey to Pirates

My mom's favorite player, Sean Casey of the Cincinnati Reds, was traded yesterday, to the Pirates for Dave Williams, a #4 starter with a 4.4 ERA. Casey, a popular player often called the "Mayor of Cincinnati", was being paid $8.5 mil while Williams salary is $1.4 mil so it probably was time for him to go, even if it is one of those heartless business moves that happen regularly in baseball today. While I found Casey to be a big ol' doofus singles hitter, he is an old-fashioned baseball guy, and the loss of this eight-year veteran's presence in the clubhouse is not a good thing for the Reds.

What I Do for Work

I know people think I spend ALL DAY on line at work, which is partially true, but I also get to produce cool projects like this one. Visionaire 47: Taste was released last week with much acclaim and TONS of sales at Art Basel in Miami. John, my co-worker, is mortified that the AP picked up his Willy Wonka quote, and reprinted it in many locations, including Al-Jazeera. Not exactly what the Visionaire art asthetic demands...He is officially banned from talking to all reporters from here on out.

For the Sake of the Song

I saw the new Townes Van Zandt documentary called "Be Here to Love Me" this weekend at the Angelika. While I'd seen some of the footage before in Heartworn Highways, a 1977 film shot partially in Nashville about the rebirth of the outlaw country movement (available from Netflix, it contains some excellent footage that includes a supremely baby-faced Stevie Earle!!), much of the footage was new to me. While the film doesn't follow a traditional narrative path, it does a nice job of turning what is a real bummer of a story into something bittersweet, and ultimately recognizes the talent that was Townes. Make no mistake -- Townes was a self-destructive drunk who wrote some of the most brillant songs in the world, and his death at 52 was simply a sad waste that everyone saw coming for years. The film doesn't gloss over his past, but I can only guess at the tales left out given the bits and pieces that were included about his ruinous behavior. The documentary gets a little music video-ey (fading out stills as a song plays over them), making me think there isn't much good footage of Townes available.

Because he was notoriously falling apart at the seams for years, he only recorded about ten studio albums along with a slew of live releases that includes the much-lauded "Live at the Old Quarter." I never did get to see him play. One of my biggest regrets is blowing off the last show he played in NYC during the fall of 1996 at the Bottom Line. I had just moved here and remember thinking "oh, it's New York - of course he'll play again." Regretfully, I was wrong on that count, as he died on January 1st, 1997.

Siberian Kitten 2: Electric Boogaloo

I really, truly am not going to be so queer as to make this blog "all about my cats" (or someone should kill me now...) but I do have a new kitten arriving. Presenting: Baxter!! He's the red kitty in front. And I'm a little excited to have a 9-week old baby moving in tomorrow.