Hey budz! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you with my little life updates, my birthday week somehow stretched into a weeks-long haze of not wanting to write-ness but now BREAK’S OVER! Most of my birthday was a good time but there’s always a kind of post-birthday malaise that sets in as you come to grips with the realization that you are still more or less the same person with many if not all of the same problems despite the celebrations in both in life and online. This was my first year of birthday sans Facebook so I missed out on all the strange well-wishings from random people I haven’t spoken with in decades who I must assume wish happy birthdays to every single person that appears in their birthday alerts. I don’t think I missed the actual proclamations but there was a strange pang of sadness for those who did not get the chance to indulge in their strange little hobby.
ROSES AND THORNS
When I got to college I heard about kids who would sit down to dinner with their parents and name three good things and three bad things that they saw or experienced that day, they’d call them Roses and Thorns. This sounded like a nice way of communicating as opposed to my childhood of spending dinner hoping that we’d sit late enough to miss the boring syndicated episode of MASH and be dining just as the awesome syndicated episode of Night Court was coming on. So now I’m stealing this idea for what may or may not be a running feature!
ROSES:
Almost every year I’ve lived in New York I’ve gotten my birthday dinner with my partner at the same place, Keens Steakhouse, and every year we go it rules. Through the years we’ve attempted to perfect our order, not as tall of a task as you think as the menu hasn’t changed since we started going, and I think this year we finally nailed it. Presented for your perusal is what I think is the optimal Keens experience: One martini at the bar → One martini at the table with buttered rolls and crudites → Wedge salad and lump crabmeat cocktail → Steak of your choice with glass of dark red wine → key lime pie and creme brulee with digestif of your choice. I knew there are some controversial ideas in there, I can hear the fans of both hot sides with the steaks and the mutton chop howling as I type, but brother it doesn’t get better than that. Is it a little too much food? Of course, but the steaks will keep and if you order the t-bone as I did you can take it home and tear into the leftovers like an animal late at night rather than attempting to daintily cut every piece of meat off of it in the restaurant. Sound off in the comments if you want to fight me about it.
I went to a real ass house party this weekend and even though I was a little too tired for it I was delighted to go see a bunch of people dancing in the dark in a loft-style apartment for the first time in what seems like forever. I am old and married and more often than not calculating much sleep I’ll get given how early the old angry dog we have wakes us up, so I don’t get invited to a lot of real deal parties anymore. I was even offered drugs! Which I turned down on accountof thee aforementioned too-tirednesss, but it was still nice to feel like a guy who would be offered strange powders in dark loud rooms.
We went to the small but very awesome Georgia O’Keefe show that’s at MoMA right now and oh boy it was good. I was a dumb-ass Georgia O’Keefe dismisser for many years, possibly due to her ubiquity but also possibly due to my dumb-assery. LET ME TELL YOU THOUGH SHE WHOOPS ASS. This MoMA show is mostly watercolors and process stuff but they’re all very good even without context. I would encourage all of you to take the time to go through twice, it’s small enough that you could make two loops in an hour, and really dig into it.
THORNS:
My friends, I went to Shakespeare in the Park and unfortunately, the production was not great! I say the production when I should really say the guy who played Hamlet, we saw Hamlet obvs., was bad! The rest of the show was fine, the set was pretty awesome if a little underused and the woman who played Ophelia really brought it. The lead, disappointingly, played Hamlet as a dick which is a pretty boring way to play Hamlet. I was a bit of a Shakespeare nerd as a youth so I’ve seen and read Hamlet a few times and while yes, he gives off real petulant jerk vibes, I think the jerk thing is way overdone. This is a tough thing to reckon with during a nearly three-hour play.
While I enjoyed the party at the time, boy oh boy was I wrecked by it for about two days afterward. Now this was probably due to an accumulation of bad nights slept but dang, feeling terrible after a party when I didn’t even do drugs?!? Pure garbage! Don’t get old, or at least get old and go ahead and do the drugs, you’re going to feel like crap anyway.
I’m on an elimination diet for some not-too-intense health stuff and I don’t understand how there are so many commercials for cheesy sandwiches.
SOUND OF THE WEEK
This could be a song or just like a sound I heard or something. MY SUBSTACK MY RULES!
Long ago this was the theme for a short-lived podcast whose name escapes me, I think Tom Scharpling was involved somehow. Anyway, the song stuck with me well beyond the podcast and I just chalked that up to the way things go sometimes. It popped up again on one of the WFMU comps I mentioned in a previous missive and I’m very glad about that. The last bit where they all scream “FBI! CIA!” rules.
CELEBRITY SIGHTING OF THE WEEK
Fareed Zakaria was at the same performance of Hamlet, I did not get the chance to ask him what he thought about it!
THAT’S IT, HOPE IT DOESN’T TAKE A MONTH FOR ME TO SEND ANOTHER ONE OF THESE OUT!