Shopsin's (120 Essex Street) is a New York institution, a restaurant that began as a grocery store; its owner, Kenny Shopsin, is colorful, irascible, and talented. Shopsin's is famous for breakfast but also for its vast, unusual, common-sense menu. Shopsin has just written a book that is half cookbook and half memoir, entirely fascinating. I had never sat down and read a cookbook from cover to cover but that is what happened with Shopsin's book (co-written with Carolynn Carreno). It is called Eat Me. The introduction is a reprint of a New Yorker article by Calvin (Bud) Trillin, a Shopsin's regular. If you do go to the restaurant, do pay attention to Shopsin's idiosyncrasies, because he allegedly has a Soup-Nazi-like intolerance that may earn you permanent exile from his restaurant. (SJD)
I recently took the kids to see a performance by Jim Dale, the longtime British stage actor (he won a Tony for Barnum) who is best known these days as the wildly entertaining reader of the Harry Potter books on tape. He was reading an adaptation of a Eudora Welty story called “The Shoe Bird,” which he recently recorded with the Seattle Symphony. (It was wonderful, and I encourage you to give it a listen.) Afterward, Dale took questions from the audience -- which, predictably, were about the Harry Potter series. Items of interest that emerged: Dale was given only 100 pages of manuscript at a time to read and then record, so he never knew what was coming; and in order to keep track of the 146 voices he’d created for all the characters, he often pre-recorded a bit of the characters’ voices and then held a tape recorder up to his ear in the studio to remind himself. (SJD)
If you live in or are visiting New York and have children, do everything you can to take in one of the Young People's Concerts at the New York Philharmonic. Even if you don’t love the music on that day’s program -- we recently attended “Ravel’s Paris,” not my favorite by a long shot -- all the extras in the program are terrific: the dancers, composers, instrumentalists, and explainers who are paraded out by conductor Delta David Gier to put the music in context for the kids. (SJD)
14 Comments
a free yo-yo for the first comment???? ;)
— Orphiehaha you stole my idea, ill take a yo-yo as well
— visualbowlerGet yer yoyo over to a dictionary, boy. “Blasé” is not an adjective that should be applied to any game, Knicks or otherwise.
Maybe you meant just “blah”? No sé… (-:
— Mackhow is this year the first annual yoyo shindig?- I thought yoyos peaked when our prez was a crook
— frankendufI would also like a yo-yo. I actually agree. How could this be the first yo-yo shindig. This is the first I have heard about yo-yos since the mid 1990s.
— golden52Now you have to demonstrate how an irrational purchase of yo-yos will lead to an upsurge in sales of your current or future books.
— Matt_birchallWas the good, that resulted from your meeting, the reduction in staff at M-L or the increase in availability of yoyos?
I’ll be a freakonomics yo-yo ambassador! Here’s a pic of me yo-yoing at 13,000 feet.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/93/249743941_21c19f5df9.jpg
— thewbert97 guesses on the Bond pitcher. No thanks. Can’t wait til your next one!
— sygyzyUmm.. they just mean the first year of this particular contest. It’s happening a week after the World Yo-yo Contest in Orlando, and so some of the international players can stay a bit longer an participate. That’s where the “international” part of the name comes from.
It’s been a while since the last major public “boom” for yo-yoing, but it’s had quite a thriving subculture for the last couple of years due to the internet and rise of new technologies. It’s a world away from where it was in 1998, let alone in the 60s.. If you search around online, you’ll find plenty of crazy videos.
— Shawn FumoIt’s not the first yo-yo constest ever, but it is the first New York state yo-yo contest. I think.
— ChrisJust FYI: “blasé” means unimpressed, not unimpressive.
— AlexCredible intelligence reports indicated that an already-set-in-motion plan coordinating simultaneous terrorist strikes against US landmarks (Brooklyn Bridge, Midtown Tunnel, Golden Gate Bridge, Disney World, Lincoln Memorial, etc.) was called off by Osama bin Laden because he wanted al Qaeda’s next major attack inside the US to be more “spectacular” than 9/11. (The plot kind of rips apart the “fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here” mantra, doesn’t it?)
That being said, a single lone-wolf sniper, whether self initiated or planted into the population with marching orders, is capable of terrorizing an entire metropolitan region for an extended period of time at a very low cost. (Son of Sam, DC Sniper, Manson, etc.) Ten anonymous lone wolves operating in ten large cities can potentially induce mass panic magnified many times out of proportion to their true number. As individual snipers fail to act or are captured/killed, the remaining wolves continue attacking until they too are eliminated.
— JB in NYCThere is no such thing as a “First Annual.” It does not become an annual event until the second year of the event.
— BTWell, this entry would be based on the assumption that the gentleman of mention suffers from some sort of unfortunate condition, but I’d have to go with Nascar driver “Dick Trickle.”
I look forward to that yo-yo.
— David