September 22, 2010
By FRED A. BERNSTEIN
ALL cities have their ups and downs, but Chicago has been on the rise by playing to its strengths, adding parks, architectural crowd pleasers and public art. Much of this has happened on the watch of Mayor Richard M. Daley, who, after 21 years in office, announced this month that he would be stepping down. How will the city fare without him? Just fine, probably, thanks to the raft of improvements that has left Chicago fortified both by 19th- and 20th-century public spaces brimming with 21st-century attractions.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) LOOP THE LOOP
Chicago is a city of architecture tours, but one of the best is right above you: the “L,” the elevated subway that circles the Loop (transitchicago.com). Get on the brown, orange or pink lines — it doesn’t matter which color, as long as you sit in the first car by the front-view window — and round the two-square-mile area. If you’re going clockwise, look to the left. Among landmarks you’ll see are Bertrand Goldberg’s spectacular Marina City, the new Trump International Hotel and Tower, Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion band shell and Louis Sullivan’s historic Auditorium Building. Miss one? No problems. The $2.25 ticket buys unlimited loops.
8 p.m.
2) MIDWAY FARE
Credit the recession, but a number of good midprice but high-style restaurants have opened in Chicago in the last two years. A favorite is Gilt Bar (230 West Kinzie Street; 312-464-9544; giltbarchicago.com), a casual restaurant in the River North neighborhood that isn’t casual about its cooking. The menu features New American dishes like blackened cauliflower with capers ($7) and ricotta gnocchi with sage and brown butter ($13). After dinner, head downstairs to Curio, a basement bar with a Prohibition theme. Try the Death’s Door Daisy, made with artisanal Wisconsin vodka and Aperol, a blood orange liqueur, for $10.
11 p.m.
3) COME ON IN
There are so many clubs on Ontario Street, just north of the loop, that it’s sometimes known as Red Bull Row. For a mellower jolt, head to the Uptown neighborhood, to Big Chicks (5024 North Sheridan Road; 773-728-5511; bigchicks.com) a gay bar that welcomes everyone. The drinks are cheap, the crowd is friendly and the décor is appealingly kooky.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) FANCY EGGS
Couldn’t get to dinner at Frontera Grill, the nouvelle Mexican restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Rick Bayless? No worries. Just head over for breakfast at Xoco (449 North Clark Street; 312-661-1434; rickbayless.com), Mr. Bayless’s newest restaurant. It’s served till 10 a.m.; expect a line after 8:30. Favorites include scrambled egg empanada with poblano chili ($3), and an open-face torta with soft poached egg, salsa, cheese, cilantro and black beans ($4). Chocolate café au lait ($3.25) comes with a single hot, crisp, sugary churro.
11 a.m.
5) OFF-LABEL STRIP
The Magnificient Mile area is filled with flagships (Gucci, Vuitton — you know the list). But there are still some independent stores you won’t find at your hometown mall. Ikram (873 North Rush Street; 312-587-1000; ikram.com) is the stylish boutique that counts Michelle Obama among its customers, with fashion-forward labels like Jason Wu and Martin Margiela. East Oak Street has a couple of cool shops, including Sofia (No. 72; 312-640-0878; sofiavintage.com). Next door is Colletti Gallery (No. 102; 312-664-6767; collettigallery.com), with a gorgeous selection of Art Deco and Art Nouveau furniture and objets. It’s a short walk from there to the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 East Chicago Avenue; 312-280-2660; mcachicago.org), which has a spectacular exhibition of works by Alexander Calder — and works inspired by Calder — through Oct. 17.
2 p.m.
6) FIRST NEIGHBORHOOD
Walking around Hyde Park, a leafy enclave about four miles south of the Loop, it’s easy to see why the Obamas settled there. Their house, on South Greenwood Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, is nearly invisible behind Secret Service barricades. Luckily, the nearby Robie House (5757 South Woodlawn Avenue; 800-514-3849; gowright.org), a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, is open for tours. See if you can find an abstracted male figure in the Japanese-inspired leaded-glass windows. Across the street, the beautifully landscaped University of Chicago campus is worth exploring for an afternoon (or a term).
7 p.m.
7) LIVESTOCK MENU
Chicago was once the meatpacking capital of the world, and it still knows what to do with offal. Take Girl & the Goat (809 West Randolph Streeet, 312-492-6262; girlandthegoat.com), a much-blogged-about new restaurant where the Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard takes livestock parts seriously. The often-updated menu recently included lamb ribs with grilled avocado and pistachio piccata ($17), and braised beef tongue with masa and beef vinaigrette ($12). If you’re not a carnivore, try chickpeas three ways ($11), and for dessert, potato fritters with lemon poached eggplant and Greek yogurt ($8). The soaring dining room, designed by the Chicago design firm 555 International, is warm and modern, with exposed beams, walls of charred cedar and a large open kitchen. Reservations essential.
10 p.m.
8) FUNNY BONE
The owners of the Ontourage nightclub (157 West Ontario Street; 312-573-1470; ontouragechicago.com) were tired of waiting until midnight for the crowds to gather, so they began offering comedy shows at 10 on Saturdays. You won’t find big names, but a hit-or-miss roster of itinerant comedians, some who heckle the audience in language that can’t be printed here. Tickets, $10 include admission to the upstairs lounge, where bottle-service vodkas start at $200.
Sunday
10 a.m.
9) BEAUTIFICATION BRUNCH
Logan Square, about two miles northwest of the Loop, is a remnant of Chicago’s late-19th-century beautification movement, with a statue of an eagle by Evelyn Longman where two of the grandest boulevards meet. Nearby, Longman & Eagle (2657 North Kedzie Avenue; 773-276-7110; longmanandeagle.com) is a rough-edged bar that serves a refined brunch: a chunky sockeye salmon tartare with pickled mango ($10) or a wild boar “Sloppy Joe” ($10). Six hotel rooms are set to open upstairs.
1 p.m.
10) GRAND PIANO
Chicago knows how to mix neo-classical architecture with contemporary design, and no place does it better than the Art Institute of Chicago (111 South Michigan Avenue; 312-443-3600; artinstituteofchicago.org), which opened its celebrated Modern Wing last year. Designed by Renzo Piano, it the luminous addition contains a magnificent set of galleries for 1900-1950 European art (Picasso, Giacometti, Klee are a few of the big names) and a capacious room for the museum’s design collection. Hungry or not, check out Terzo Piano, the stunning rooftop restaurant with views of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park across the street.
3 p.m.
11) WHEELS UP
From the museum, walk over the pedestrian bridge, also designed by Mr. Piano, to Millennium Park, and rent bikes from Bike and Roll (312-729-1000; bikechicago.com), about $35 a day, for a ride up the shore of Lake Michigan. You’ll pass Navy Pier, skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe, and hundreds of beach volleyball courts, which make this the Malibu of the Midwest on summer and fall weekends. Along the way, you’ll pass Lincoln Park, with a new pavilion by the Chicago architect Jeanne Gang — another example of how the city is updating its open spaces.
IF YOU GO
Numerous airlines, including Delta, American and United, fly nonstop into Chicago from all three New York-area airports. Based on recent Web search, round-trip flights start at about $219 for travel in October.
The Allegro (171 West Randolph Street, 312-236-0123; allegrochicago.com), a 483-room hotel in the city’s bustling theater district, in the bold style of Kimpton hotels. Rooms from about $149.
Opened last year, the Elysian (11 East Walton Street; 312-646-1300; elysianhotels.com) is a cushy 188-room hotel where the beds aren’t made — they’re “draped” in 460-thread-count Rivolta Carmignani linens. From the outside, the building, not far from the Magnificent Mile, resembles a chateau. Rooms start at about $430.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 24, 2010
An earlier version of this column misstated the name of one of the most famous and well-known areas of Chicago. It is Magnificent Mile -- not Miracle Mile.
Friday, September 24, 2010
NYT: In Bing Crosby’s Wine Cellar, Vintage Baseball
September 23, 2010
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
How a near pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
A canny preservationist of his own legacy, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century’s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, Calif., home.
“Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,” said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport’s archivist.
Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series — leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games — this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast — is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.
Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris.
“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” Kathryn Crosby said. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, ‘It’s very nice to celebrate things, but couldn’t we be more restrained?’ ”
After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.
They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.
He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.
“I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,” Bader said. “It was just pure luck.”
Bader’s call to M.L.B. officials last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in December, and to wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host. M.L.B. also plans to sell DVDs of the game.
“It’s a time capsule,” Trotta said.
Hearing of the broadcast’s discovery, Jim Reisler, a historian born in Pittsburgh, sounded stunned.
“Wow,” he said. His book about the game — “The Best Game Ever” — would have benefited from seeing the NBC production, he said; he relied on the radio call. “It would have given me a greater sense of the tremendous ebb and flow of the game,” he said.
Dick Groat, the Pirates’ shortstop, said: “It was such a unique game to begin with. It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable.”
The production is simple by today’s standards. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players’ names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.
Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.
Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra’s three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirates catcher Hal Smith’s eighth-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 (“That base hit will long be remembered,” Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente — Allen called him Bob — bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski’s winning drive to left field (“And the fans go wild,” Allen said).
The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam’s apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.
It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing, 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.
But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.
“How about that?” Allen said after Mantle’s play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate. NBC’s sound was good enough to hear a fan shout, “Just get on, Billy, get on!” Mazeroski did more than that. After his home run, fans poured onto the field and danced on the Pittsburgh dugout.
Only later did Bing Crosby witness the joy and jubilation recorded just for him.
“I can still see Bing hitting the mantel with the Scotch,” Kathryn Crosby said.
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
How a near pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
A canny preservationist of his own legacy, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century’s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, Calif., home.
“Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,” said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport’s archivist.
Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series — leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games — this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast — is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.
Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris.
“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” Kathryn Crosby said. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, ‘It’s very nice to celebrate things, but couldn’t we be more restrained?’ ”
After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.
They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.
He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.
“I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,” Bader said. “It was just pure luck.”
Bader’s call to M.L.B. officials last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in December, and to wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host. M.L.B. also plans to sell DVDs of the game.
“It’s a time capsule,” Trotta said.
Hearing of the broadcast’s discovery, Jim Reisler, a historian born in Pittsburgh, sounded stunned.
“Wow,” he said. His book about the game — “The Best Game Ever” — would have benefited from seeing the NBC production, he said; he relied on the radio call. “It would have given me a greater sense of the tremendous ebb and flow of the game,” he said.
Dick Groat, the Pirates’ shortstop, said: “It was such a unique game to begin with. It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable.”
The production is simple by today’s standards. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players’ names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.
Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.
Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra’s three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirates catcher Hal Smith’s eighth-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 (“That base hit will long be remembered,” Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente — Allen called him Bob — bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski’s winning drive to left field (“And the fans go wild,” Allen said).
The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam’s apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.
It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing, 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.
But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.
“How about that?” Allen said after Mantle’s play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate. NBC’s sound was good enough to hear a fan shout, “Just get on, Billy, get on!” Mazeroski did more than that. After his home run, fans poured onto the field and danced on the Pittsburgh dugout.
Only later did Bing Crosby witness the joy and jubilation recorded just for him.
“I can still see Bing hitting the mantel with the Scotch,” Kathryn Crosby said.
NYT: The Connecticut-Country-Club Crackup
Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesLinda McMahon represents a political culture that was unknown in Connecticut 20 years ago.
September 23, 2010
By MATT BAI
You could spend your life around political campaigns and never see a celebration quite like the one Linda McMahon held last month after Connecticut Republicans made her their Senate candidate in a three-way primary. McMahon is the fabulously wealthy founder (along with her high-school sweetheart and husband, Vince) of World Wrestling Entertainment, a company the McMahons transformed into a sort of Disney for the age of postindustrial American anger. Unknown to Connecticut voters before she began her run, she spent more than $20 million of her own fortune to beat out two Republican candidates — one of them recruited by the national party — for the right to square off this November against Richard Blumenthal, the state’s longtime Democratic attorney general, in a contest to succeed Christopher Dodd, who is retiring.
The first thing I noticed when I wandered into McMahon’s victory party, at a Crowne Plaza Hotel south of Hartford, was the lavish spread — not the usual weenies and plastic cups, but warm pasta and flaky pastries and drinks from an open bar, all of it consumed by supporters carting free “Linda” tote bags and T-shirts. The second thing was the vintage 1980s soundtrack, which included decidedly unpolitical tracks like the AC/DC classic “You Shook Me All Night Long.” She had the sightless eyes, telling me no lies, knocking me out with those American thighs. . . .
Onstage, a tableau of supporters carefully constructed for television in the way of modern campaigns — nonwhite faces up front, directly behind the candidate — stood assembled under a banner that read, blandly, “It’s Time for Something Different.” Just behind the lectern, alongside other family members, loomed McMahon’s ponytailed, R.V.-size son-in-law, the wrestler known as Triple H. Then a state senator, Len Fasano, delivered one of the more bizarre political orations I had ever heard, getting himself so worked up that he apparently forgot which state he served and introduced the crowd to “the next U.S. senator from the great state of New York!”
The 61-year-old candidate herself walked onstage in a pink suit and pearls, looking for all the world like the president of the Fairfield P.T.A., and proceeded to deliver a victory speech that was sort of amazing for its amalgamation of clichés and a complete, almost defiant, lack of substance.
“I had a great fear that the American dream was in the greatest jeopardy that it has ever been in our lifetime, and I didn’t want to lose that opportunity for the American dream for our children and our grandchildren.”
“The great communicator Ronald Reagan had it right, but this president and this Congress have it wrong!”
“This campaign has never been about the political pundits or the establishment. This campaign is about you!”
And so on. Then McMahon strode off the stage to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
Such a spectacle might not seem out of place in a state like California, where millionaires and celebrities are always jumping into the fray, or in one like Minnesota, where popular revolt seems to come in waves. But this is Connecticut, my home state, where the business of campaigns and governance used to be a predictable, serious affair, the province of mostly estimable public servants who worked their way up through town councils or local party machines. Sometimes called the Land of Steady Habits, Connecticut was never a place for garish campaigns and outsize characters with bank statements to match.
Until recently, the closest thing Connecticut experienced to an overturning of the political order, at least in modern times, was the revolt over a state income tax in the early 1990s. So incensed were the voters then that they replaced their moderate governor, the former longtime senator Lowell Weicker, with a more conservative career politician, a three-term congressman named John Rowland. Take that, status quo!
That, however, was before Rowland and a small cadre of other Connecticut officeholders were hauled away to prison on corruption charges; before Democrats ousted Joe Lieberman from the party only six years after they nominated him for the vice presidency; before the politicians in Hartford blew a hole the size of Long Island Sound in the state budget. As I watched McMahon’s hopeful supporters file out of the ballroom clutching their tote bags, I found myself wondering: when, exactly, did genteel Connecticut become Louisiana? And if politics could get this weird here, then what did that mean for the rest of the country?
As in much of the Northeast, Connecticut politics for most of the last century was the purview of two distinct cultural camps: the urban, ethnic machines that dominated the Democratic Party and the patrician Republicans (the Bushes of Greenwich, most notably) who considered it their duty to serve. In postwar suburbs like Trumbull, where my parents moved from Bridgeport and raised their three children, the two groups coexisted uneasily but, for the most part, productively and congenially. Democrats and Republicans might have argued over where to build a new school or whether to let the highway plow through a park, but rarely was there anything personal about it.
Things started to change in the 1980s, for reasons both cultural and economic. A new generation of politicians ascended to power — liberals and conservatives with sharply moralistic approaches to politics. At the same time, the manufacturing decline that was beginning to erode the nation’s economic base, along with the “white flight” that began in the 1960s, hollowed out Connecticut’s cities and weakened its governing establishment. Outsiders tend to think of Connecticut as a collection of wealthy suburbs and rural horse farms, as portrayed in books and movies like “The Ice Storm.” That side of things does exist, particularly on the “gold coast” that runs along the southwest edge of the state, where many hedge-fund managers and movie stars live. And yet much of the state is heavily industrialized, or at least it was until the 1970s. According to data compiled by the Brookings Institution that looks at the core cities of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, two of Connecticut’s largest cities — Hartford and New Haven — are now among the dozen poorest in the country. Hartford, the capital, is the poorest in America.
The effects of this kind of industrial decline, politically, were so gradual as to be almost imperceptible on a daily basis, but cumulatively they took a toll on the political climate. Fear of crime created political pressure for stricter sentencing guidelines, which drove up the state’s incarceration costs significantly. College graduates went off to other regions in search of jobs, leaving behind an aging population whose Medicaid costs are soaring. Public-sector unions replaced trade unions as the dominant political force, and soon the state was paying out unsustainable retirement benefits to its employees. The state budget has grown 60 percent in the last decade, sustained mainly by an income tax that everyone hates.
And then there’s the corruption, the sudden proliferation of which nobody I talked to in the state could adequately explain. No fewer than half a dozen major political scandals erupted in the past several years. Bridgeport’s former mayor just got out of jail after, among other things, accepting free gifts from city contractors; Hartford’s mayor is headed in for doing the same thing; and Waterbury’s onetime mayor (a convicted sex offender) isn’t getting out anytime soon. Governor Rowland, who also accepted free services from contractors, resigned from office in 2004 and served 10 months in prison.
Voter outrage at both parties, but particularly at Democrats, has been building since at least 2006. That’s when Ned Lamont, a cable-television executive whose great-grandfather was a partner at J. P. Morgan, defeated Joe Lieberman in a primary that focused mostly on the war in Iraq. (Lieberman went on to win re-election as an independent.) This year, Lamont spent $9 million to run for governor against another of his party’s entrenched politicians, a former Stamford mayor named Dan Malloy, but without a single galvanizing issue like the one he rode four years ago, he found himself unable to stir much passion from the disillusioned Democratic base, and lost.
The next incumbent after Lieberman to feel the walls closing in was Dodd, who just a few years ago seemed very likely to live out his days in the Senate. Instead, he decided not to seek a sixth term after polls revealed he had very little chance of winning. Dodd is the chairman of the banking committee and is the second-ranking Democratic member on the health-and-education committee — hard-won appointments that would, at another time, have made him seem virtually indispensable to the state. Instead, even fellow Democrats pilloried Dodd for his close ties to Wall Street executives, who make up a significant part of the state’s economy. In other words, Dodd was blasted as a sellout to his state for championing the interests of what had always been, up to now anyway, a crucial constituency.
The state has lost 103,000 jobs and counting during the current recession. And so the moment would seem well primed for Republican officeholders, who don’t control the government in Washington. The problem for Connecticut Republicans is that they don’t really have a lot of candidates left from which to choose. Ever since the party took a hard right turn in the 1980s, it has been slowly disappearing from the state. The last of the state’s moderate Republican congressmen, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays, were defeated in the past two election cycles. (Simmons, who was the national party’s choice to run against Blumenthal, was one candidate Linda McMahon defeated in the primary.) The one centrist Republican on the statewide scene, Gov. Jodi Rell, is retiring. The Republican who is bidding to replace her, a longtime party fund-raiser named Tom Foley, is, like McMahon, a self-financed candidate from Greenwich who had never run for office.
“The Republican Party is a nonentity in Connecticut today,” Weicker, who formed his own party when he ran successfully for governor in 1990, told me when I visited him at his home in Old Lyme. “It can’t find men or women that have come through the chairs to get to where they are. They find people with a wad of dough who just try to buy the office.” (Dodd, who said he was shocked when McMahon got the Republican nomination, puts it another way: “Her main selling point is money.”)
Coincidentally, and a little oddly, Weicker sits on McMahon’s board at W.W.E. After a lengthy discussion of the health care reform law, I asked him if McMahon, who favors repeal, knew what she was talking about. “No,” he answered, waving me away as if I had just asked whether either of his large dogs could fly. “I think she’s following the Republican line — to say no.”
Contrary to conventional thought, you can’t just go out and buy yourself a substantial political office in America. Al Checchi spent $40 million trying to become governor of California in 1998 and couldn’t get past the Democratic primary. Tom Golisano, a New York businessman and philanthropist, spent $93 million on three futile attempts to become that state’s governor between 1994 and 2002. The Texas entrepreneur H. Ross Perot spent $60 million during his 1992 campaign, back when 60 million bucks really meant something in presidential politics, and even though he won 19 percent of the vote, all anyone really remembers are a couple of flip charts and some “Saturday Night Live” skits. That said, $50 million — which is most likely a very conservative estimate of what Linda McMahon calls “investing in myself” — will get you a serious hearing in a state the size of Connecticut. And the way McMahon goes about spending her wrestling fortune is about as subtle as a folding chair to the skull.
Two days after the primary, I arrived at McMahon’s headquarters in the swanky suburb of West Hartford. The headquarters looked more like some interior-design-by-appointment showroom than any campaign office I had ever seen. The glass storefront, over which the word “Linda” was elegantly stenciled in small letters on a navy blue awning, sat between a toy store and an exclusive clothing boutique that had a rack of summer dresses on the brick sidewalk.
Inside, brand new iPads, still in their packaging, lay scattered on desks where you might have expected to see discarded pizza boxes. Upstairs, where the press aides sat, a dozen or so flat-screen TVs hung from a futuristic grid of metal rods, with a stack of digital recorders within easy reach. It felt as if McMahon were campaigning to be commander of Starfleet.
In person, McMahon has a confident, likable presence. Her voice retains the lilt of her native North Carolina, and she laughs easily and warmly, with the sense of humor of a woman who had no problem pretending to violently feud with her husband in front of a national television audience. She is also intensely disciplined with a script, and repeatedly, in the course of our hourlong conversation, she came back to her central theme — that what was missing in Washington were officials who understood what it took to make a small business work. “I’ve built a business,” she told me right off. “I’ve put capital at risk. I understand what rules and regulations and taxes do to business.”
At another point, she told me: “What I continued to hear even before I got into the race was: ‘Do we not have anybody who’s run a business, who can be a part of government? Can government not be run more as a business, with a little bit of attention to the bottom line?’ ”
What McMahon has in mind for the country, more specifically, is to slash or freeze a slate of corporate taxes, while also abolishing the estate tax and the gift tax and creating a series of new deductions for capital expenditures. Businesses will create jobs, McMahon says, when the government stops taking so much of their money away and wasting it on so-called public investments, and those jobs will in turn lift more Americans into affluence.
If all this stirs in you a feeling of nostalgia, like the songs on McMahon’s campaign soundtrack, that’s because it is a perfect distillation of what was once called “supply-side economics,” the gift that Ronald Reagan bequeathed to America in the 1980s and that George W. Bush then regifted in a sparkly new box. In fact, McMahon’s economic plan is largely the work of the economist and sometime television commentator John Rutledge, a supply-side evangelist who helped design Reagan’s program back in the day.
The supply-side argument, which George H. W. Bush once derided as “voodoo economics,” is prevalent among conservative candidates running this year. But as David Stockman, who was Reagan’s first budget director, argued in a Times Op-Ed essay in July, supply-siders during the Reagan and second Bush eras proved far more adept at cutting taxes than they did at scaling back federal spending, which is the main reason we have trillion-dollar budgets deficits. And so it would seem to be incumbent on a candidate like McMahon, who also rails against the debt and who advocates a balanced budget in Washington, to articulate some specific idea of where the budget can be scaled back.
I asked her, for instance, whether she was in favor of reforming entitlement programs that, along with military outlays, represent the principal forces driving spending levels ever higher. “We’re going to have to look at them,” she said, “but I can tell you that that has got to be done in the legislative arena, with open debate, with people on both sides really tackling this and talking about it. We’ve got to strengthen our entitlement programs. We’ve got to make sure that our contract with seniors is maintained and upheld.” But, she added: “I’ve made a specific point of saying I’m not going to go into that on the campaign trail, because I don’t think that’s appropriate. I think the appropriate arena is the legislative arena.”
In other words, this business of governance was too serious to be discussed in any detail during a campaign, which McMahon seemed to regard more as an exercise in theater, like “Saturday Night’s Main Event.” Instead, she returned, once again, to the value of her business experience.
“What I’ve said to people as I’ve gone around the state,” McMahon said, “is: ‘Look, I don’t have all the answers. I wish I had a magic wand and could go to Washington and wave it. But one thing that you will have from me is to take my 30 years of experience, roll up my sleeves. I built a company with 24/7 sweat equity, and I don’t think you can take your eye off the ball until you can solve all these issues and keep working at them.’ ”
For Republicans, the surprising win by the Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, in a Senate race they now seem resigned to losing, has made the campaign in Connecticut more pivotal. It is hard to see how Republicans can retake the Senate without capturing Dodd’s seat in November. But Democrats in Washington don’t seem terribly worried about McMahon’s candidacy. For one thing, they are confident that the details of McMahon’s lifestyle and her involvement in a steroid-addled industry won’t sit well with the state’s well-mannered voters. McMahon had a yacht called Sexy Bitch, and the most famous video clip of her — shown by a Republican opponent in the primary — shows her kicking Jim Ross, a W.W.E. announcer, in the groin.
And Democrats remain bullish on Blumenthal, a fixture in Connecticut politics for 25 years who has already won five statewide elections. Blumenthal’s campaign suffered through an existential crisis in May, after Raymond Hernandez reported in The Times that Blumenthal repeatedly misled voters about having served in Vietnam. But Blumenthal apologized — after several agonizing days — and maintained his double-digit lead over McMahon in the polls. This advantage, which has since narrowed considerably, led elated Democrats to conclude that if he could survive that kind of scandal with hardly a hiccup, then he could very likely survive anything McMahon might throw at him.
Near the end of my interview with McMahon, I asked her how exactly she intended to take on Blumenthal in a reliably Democratic state. What was her critique of a man the voters seemed to find eminently acceptable, even after his integrity had been called into question? McMahon didn’t hesitate.
“The voters in Connecticut are going to have a very clear choice in November,” she told me, describing Blumenthal as “a career politician” who has never created a single job. “He’s been in the lawsuit business. His business is suing people. My business is creating jobs. My business is adding and building to the economy. So it’s just a very clear choice.”
She paused and held up a hand to literally frame the choice for me. “The primary differences are career politician versus businesswoman,” McMahon said, sounding very much like a human bullet point.
If McMahon’s sleek storefront command center was the antithesis of what one would expect from a campaign office, then Blumenthal’s headquarters in downtown Hartford was depressingly predictable. It is just the kind of ground-floor suite that campaigns rent for nothing, with faded dingy walls and industrial-strength carpet to match, illuminated by yellowy fluorescent bulbs. When I met Blumenthal there, the day after my conversation with McMahon, he showed me into an office that was bare except for a couple of chairs and a battered wooden desk.
After decades on the immediate periphery of the state’s Democratic landscape, always next in line for a Senate seat but biding his time with the patience of a monk, Blumenthal is a recognizable brand in Connecticut. He doggedly shows up everywhere, listens attentively, takes copious notes and makes prudent statements. He has sued or subpoenaed tobacco companies and subprime-mortgage lenders, to name just a few, and even took on MySpace (in order to get the names of sex offenders) — a record of “standing up” for businesses and families that, more than any one issue, forms the basis of his pitch to voters. Surprisingly boyish for a man of 64, with prominent ears and squinty eyes, he comes across as earnest and a little robotic. “One of my most important strengths in this race is that people know me,” Blumenthal told me. “Not just from the TV, but personally. I’ve been to the parades and the fairs and the funerals and the christenings and, you know, places where people talk and interact.” He added, “I think that personal touch is still very important to people.”
Blumenthal said he can understand why Connecticut voters seemed enraged at anyone in power these days. “I feel the anger and frustration about the way Washington is failing to listen and to respond,” he said carefully. “And I share it, because I’ve fought it as well. So, you know, some of the sense of distance and frustration and even anger — I feel it as a public servant and as a citizen. It’s very well justified, and I share it.”
Blumenthal didn’t sound angry; he sounded as if he were dictating a letter. But this was his message, and he steered back to it no less than three more times in a 20-minute conversation. “So when people are angry and frustrated about what’s happening in Washington, they’re right,” he said at one point. “They’re dead right.” And then: “I’m an outsider to Washington.” And later: “I’m as frustrated and angry as anyone.”
Blumenthal has faithfully done the people’s business all these years, in a way that has apparently gratified them. But now that his moment has arrived, just having been in office for all that time turns out to be his most significant vulnerability. It may not help that Blumenthal just seems so stereotypically incumbent. Even if he hadn’t been in office for a quarter century already, it would probably feel as if he had.
The assault on Blumenthal’s Vietnam half-truths didn’t stick with the voters because it didn’t reinforce anything they already believed about him. This is how it is in politics; because the voters long ago decided that this Blumenthal guy they kept reading about was basically an honest sort, it will likely take more than a few misstatements to derail him. But the other argument that McMahon is just now beginning to make, that Blumenthal is your typical insider, a lifelong politician who just doesn’t get what they’re going through — this is an attack that might flower in the current environment, and he seems to know it.
And so perhaps Washington Democrats should be more concerned about McMahon and the challenge she presents. At a time when unemployment in the state hovers around 9 percent, voters may not especially care about McMahon’s yacht or whether she gave her wrestlers health care plans or tacitly encouraged them to shoot up steroids. (And, in any event, it’s doubtful they consider anything that happened at W.W.E. to be so much less respectable than the path traveled by some of the investment bankers and trial lawyers who have made it to the Senate.)
McMahon is a talented candidate, in the sense that she knows how to choose a point and drive it home, and you can bet she will spend the next six weeks hammering away at the center of the electorate — that is, at all those civic-minded former Republicans in Connecticut who routinely provide Democrats their margins of victory but who long for a better alternative. She has been careful not to box herself into any positions that might strike voters as kind of wacky, unlike the party’s Senate candidates in Kentucky (where Rand Paul qualified his support for the Civil Rights Act) and Nevada (where Sharron Angle has suggested that voters might look for “Second Amendment remedies” to a dysfunctional Congress). There is little Tea Party presence to speak of in Connecticut, and so McMahon was never caught having to take a stand on repealing the direct election of senators or anything like that. She is pro-choice and pro-stem-cell research, and she supports Connecticut’s right to codify gay marriages — all positions well within the mainstream of the state’s moderate electorate.
Blumenthal told me he takes “nothing for granted,” and apparently he means it. The day after I saw him, he left a phone message for my mother, who still lives in Trumbull. He knew my late father, a trial lawyer, and he wanted her to know he enjoyed talking with me, he said, and he left his home number. It was old-school, detail-oriented politics (what mother doesn’t want to hear kind words about her son?), and I had to admire the effort. But when I asked her about it later, my mother said she never called him back.
For the better part of three decades, from the years after World War II until his death in 1975, John Bailey was the most important man in Connecticut politics. Your classic cigar-chomping party boss of the industrial age, Bailey served as chairman of the state Democratic Party through five presidencies and as the party’s national chairman for seven years in the 1960s. He is said to have wielded nearly absolute power in the state’s urban wards, the force behind second-generation Irish, Italian and Jewish politicians who went on to long careers.
Paul Timpanelli, who runs Bridgeport’s business council — and who, as a young Democratic politician back in the 1980s, gave me my first summer internship — is just old enough to remember the tail end of that era, and over lunch at one of Bridgeport’s few really good downtown restaurants, he marveled at how party politics had changed. Specifically, Timpanelli was talking about how state Democrats failed to rally behind Dodd earlier this year — how they seemingly did not know how to offer an endangered incumbent, a man who served for 30 years in the Senate and became a giant of state politics, any incentive to seek re-election.
“John Bailey would have offered him the world, and he would have given the world,” Timpanelli told me. When I mentioned this to Dodd, he agreed. “The party apparatus didn’t seem to be there or know how to handle this,” he said, speaking of the erosion in his standing.
Party bosses like Bailey are a thing of the past in Connecticut, as most everywhere else. So is the party loyalty they inspired. As recently as 1982, Democrats in Connecticut made up 40 percent of the electorate, with Republicans making up about 27 percent and unaffiliated voters another third. By 2010, Democrats actually slipped a few points, to 37 percent, while Republican affiliation fell to 20 percent. Some 42 percent of the state’s voters now identify themselves as independent, a number that has been rising for 20 years.
Connecticut in my parents’ day was the kind of state in which institutions really mattered — religious congregations and city newspapers and insurance companies, garden clubs and the Knights of Columbus, with their towering headquarters in New Haven. Connecticut voters, like voters in a lot of the country, trusted in an established order that seemed to be working pretty well for them, but then people saw their cities and their industries collapse, and even the Catholic Church was tainted by scandal, and elected officials started selling their services for home improvements.
And this is what makes a Linda McMahon possible here and in other parts of America — not just her millions of dollars or the crippled economy, but the sense that the establishment has lost its credibility. It is something McMahon, having built a megaentertainment business without the imprimatur of cultural arbiters, intuitively understood about politics. The more her party’s leadership tried to write her off, the more Democrats scoffed at her candidacy, the more viable she became.
I was discussing the mood in the state recently with Tom D’Amore, a former state Republican chairman who has long since bolted the party, when suddenly he told me a story about his father, an Electrolux vacuum salesman who smoked more than a pack a day for most of his life. “One day, it must have been in the 1960s sometime, he just quit,” D’Amore told me. “Cold turkey. I said to him, ‘Dad, why did you suddenly decide to stop smoking?’ And I’ll never forget it. He pointed a finger at me” — and here D’Amore demonstrated by grimly pointing one at me — “and he said: ‘The surgeon general of the United States says smoking can kill you. And they wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.’
“I mean, can you imagine anyone saying that now?” D’Amore asked me. “In that generation, government really displayed by its actions that it was a force for good.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head.
“Nobody here thinks that way anymore.”
Matt Bai is a national political columnist for The Times and a regular contributor to the magazine.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
22/09 Đến 50% nam giới Australia muốn tìm bạn gái mới
Kết quả khảo sát hơn 1.000 người đàn ông tại xứ sở chuột túi được công bố ngày 21/9 trên mạng trực tuyến ABC cho thấy có tới hơn một nửa đàn ông Australia cho rằng chìa khóa mở ra cánh cửa hạnh phúc của họ là đổi bạn tình cũ và tìm kiếm một người mới.
Thông tin đáng ngạc nhiên trên còn cho biết rõ cứ hai người đàn ông tại quốc gia này thì có một người luôn nghĩ rằng việc tìm kiếm và sở hữu một cô bạn gái mới sẽ khiến đời sống của họ thêm ý nghĩa và đầy màu sắc.
Trong khi đó, có tới 44% phụ nữ Australia cho rằng việc có thêm một người bạn tình mới sẽ khiến cuộc sống của họ thêm "phiền phức."
Có tới 3/4 đàn ông tại cuộc khảo sát đã thổ lộ rằng mối quan hệ hiện tại của họ đang rất cần được "hâm nóng" một cách nghiêm túc nếu họ muốn có một cảm giác toại nguyện, nếu không giải pháp đi tìm một mối quan hệ mới là khó tránh khỏi.
Bên cạnh đó, khảo sát trên cũng tìm hiểu cách thức mà người Australia "làm giàu" đời sống của họ, cho thấy những người thuộc Thế hệ Y (sinh ra trong khoảng thời gian 1970-2000) là những người đang tận hưởng cuộc sống nhất. Đây là những đối tượng trẻ tuổi trong xã hội với đa số nhận thức rằng họ chỉ thực sự yêu quý và giữ gìn mối quan hệ nào khiến họ cảm thấy đời sống hạnh phúc và có ý nghĩa.
Tuy nhiên, đa số người Australia cho biết việc xây dựng mối quan hệ tích cực với bạn bè và gia đình mới là chìa khoá cho hạnh phúc, với khoảng 40% số người khảo sát cho biết hạnh phúc đó là tìm cho bản thân một thú vui mới, tìm hiểu thêm một kỹ năng mới hay đi du lịch để tăng cường sự thỏa mãn trong cuộc sống./.
Tuấn Anh/Sydney (Vietnam+)
Thông tin đáng ngạc nhiên trên còn cho biết rõ cứ hai người đàn ông tại quốc gia này thì có một người luôn nghĩ rằng việc tìm kiếm và sở hữu một cô bạn gái mới sẽ khiến đời sống của họ thêm ý nghĩa và đầy màu sắc.
Trong khi đó, có tới 44% phụ nữ Australia cho rằng việc có thêm một người bạn tình mới sẽ khiến cuộc sống của họ thêm "phiền phức."
Có tới 3/4 đàn ông tại cuộc khảo sát đã thổ lộ rằng mối quan hệ hiện tại của họ đang rất cần được "hâm nóng" một cách nghiêm túc nếu họ muốn có một cảm giác toại nguyện, nếu không giải pháp đi tìm một mối quan hệ mới là khó tránh khỏi.
Bên cạnh đó, khảo sát trên cũng tìm hiểu cách thức mà người Australia "làm giàu" đời sống của họ, cho thấy những người thuộc Thế hệ Y (sinh ra trong khoảng thời gian 1970-2000) là những người đang tận hưởng cuộc sống nhất. Đây là những đối tượng trẻ tuổi trong xã hội với đa số nhận thức rằng họ chỉ thực sự yêu quý và giữ gìn mối quan hệ nào khiến họ cảm thấy đời sống hạnh phúc và có ý nghĩa.
Tuy nhiên, đa số người Australia cho biết việc xây dựng mối quan hệ tích cực với bạn bè và gia đình mới là chìa khoá cho hạnh phúc, với khoảng 40% số người khảo sát cho biết hạnh phúc đó là tìm cho bản thân một thú vui mới, tìm hiểu thêm một kỹ năng mới hay đi du lịch để tăng cường sự thỏa mãn trong cuộc sống./.
Tuấn Anh/Sydney (Vietnam+)
Monday, September 20, 2010
The Pope and the Crowds
September 19, 2010
The Pope and the Crowds
By ROSS DOUTHAT
All in all, the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain over the weekend must have been a disappointment to his legions of detractors. Their bold promises notwithstanding, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens didn’t manage to clap the pope in irons and haul him off to jail. The protests against Benedict’s presence proved a sideshow to the visit, rather than the main event. And the threat (happily empty, it turned out) of an assassination plot provided a reminder of what real religious extremism looks like — as opposed to the gentle scholar, swathed in white, urging secular Britons to look with fresh eyes at their island’s ancient faith.
And the crowds came out, as they always do for papal visits — 85,000 for a prayer vigil in London, 125,000 lining Edinburgh’s streets, 50,000 in Birmingham to see Benedict beatify John Henry Newman, the famous Victorian convert from Anglicanism. Even at a time of Catholic scandal, even amid a pontificate that’s stumbled from one public-relations debacle to another, Benedict still managed to draw a warm and enthusiastic audience.
No doubt most of Britain’s five million Catholics do not believe exactly what Benedict believes and teaches. No doubt most of them are appalled at the Catholic hierarchy’s record on priestly child abuse, and disappointed that many of the scandal’s enablers still hold high office in the church.
But in turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about their faith that many of the Vatican’s critics, secular and religious alike, persistently fail to understand. They weren’t there to voice agreement with Benedict, necessarily. They were there to show their respect — for the pontiff, for his office, and for the role it has played in sustaining Catholicism for 2,000 years.
Conventional wisdom holds that such respect is increasingly misplaced, and that the papacy is increasingly a millstone around Roman Catholicism’s neck. If it weren’t for the reactionaries in the Vatican, the argument runs, priests might have been permitted to marry, forestalling the sex abuse crisis. Birth control, gay relationships, divorce and remarriage might have been blessed, bringing lapsed Catholics back into the fold. Theological dissent would have been allowed to flourish, creating a more welcoming environment for religious seekers.
And yet none of these assumptions have any real evidence to back them up. Yes, sex abuse has been devastating to the church. But as Newsweek noted earlier this year, there’s no data suggesting that celibate priests commit abuse at higher rates than the population as a whole, or that married men are less prone to pedophilia. (The real problem was the hierarchy’s fear of scandal, which led to endless cover-ups and enabled serial predation.)
And yes, the church’s exclusive theological claims and stringent moral message don’t go over well in a multicultural, sexually liberated society. But the example of Catholicism’s rivals suggests that the church might well be much worse off if it had simply refashioned itself to fit the prevailing values of the age. That’s what the denominations of mainline Protestantism have done, across the last four decades — and instead of gaining members, they’ve dwindled into irrelevance.
The Vatican of Benedict and John Paul II, by contrast, has striven to maintain continuity with Christian tradition, even at the risk of seeming reactionary and out of touch. This has cost the church its once-privileged place in the Western establishment, and earned it the scorn of fashionable opinion. But continuity, not swift and perhaps foolhardy adaptation, has always been the papacy’s purpose, and the secret of its lasting strength.
Catholics do not — should not, must not — look to the Vatican to supply the church with all its saints and visionaries and prophets. (Indeed, many of Catholicism’s greatest figures have had fraught relationships with the Holy See — including John Henry Newman, the man beatified on Sunday.) They look to Rome instead to safeguard what those visionaries achieved, to guard Catholicism’s inheritance, and provide a symbol of unity for a far-flung, billion-member church. They look to Rome for the long view: for the wisdom that not all change is for the better, and that some revolutions are better outlasted than accepted.
On Saturday, Benedict addressed Britain’s politicians in the very hall where Sir Thomas More, the great Catholic martyr, was condemned to death for opposing the reformation of Henry VIII. It was an extraordinary moment, and a reminder of the resilience of Catholicism, across a gulf of years that’s consumed thrones, nations, entire civilizations.
This, above all, is why the crowds cheered for the pope, in Edinburgh and London and Birmingham — because almost five centuries after the Catholic faith was apparently strangled in Britain, their church is still alive.
The Pope and the Crowds
By ROSS DOUTHAT
All in all, the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain over the weekend must have been a disappointment to his legions of detractors. Their bold promises notwithstanding, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens didn’t manage to clap the pope in irons and haul him off to jail. The protests against Benedict’s presence proved a sideshow to the visit, rather than the main event. And the threat (happily empty, it turned out) of an assassination plot provided a reminder of what real religious extremism looks like — as opposed to the gentle scholar, swathed in white, urging secular Britons to look with fresh eyes at their island’s ancient faith.
And the crowds came out, as they always do for papal visits — 85,000 for a prayer vigil in London, 125,000 lining Edinburgh’s streets, 50,000 in Birmingham to see Benedict beatify John Henry Newman, the famous Victorian convert from Anglicanism. Even at a time of Catholic scandal, even amid a pontificate that’s stumbled from one public-relations debacle to another, Benedict still managed to draw a warm and enthusiastic audience.
No doubt most of Britain’s five million Catholics do not believe exactly what Benedict believes and teaches. No doubt most of them are appalled at the Catholic hierarchy’s record on priestly child abuse, and disappointed that many of the scandal’s enablers still hold high office in the church.
But in turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about their faith that many of the Vatican’s critics, secular and religious alike, persistently fail to understand. They weren’t there to voice agreement with Benedict, necessarily. They were there to show their respect — for the pontiff, for his office, and for the role it has played in sustaining Catholicism for 2,000 years.
Conventional wisdom holds that such respect is increasingly misplaced, and that the papacy is increasingly a millstone around Roman Catholicism’s neck. If it weren’t for the reactionaries in the Vatican, the argument runs, priests might have been permitted to marry, forestalling the sex abuse crisis. Birth control, gay relationships, divorce and remarriage might have been blessed, bringing lapsed Catholics back into the fold. Theological dissent would have been allowed to flourish, creating a more welcoming environment for religious seekers.
And yet none of these assumptions have any real evidence to back them up. Yes, sex abuse has been devastating to the church. But as Newsweek noted earlier this year, there’s no data suggesting that celibate priests commit abuse at higher rates than the population as a whole, or that married men are less prone to pedophilia. (The real problem was the hierarchy’s fear of scandal, which led to endless cover-ups and enabled serial predation.)
And yes, the church’s exclusive theological claims and stringent moral message don’t go over well in a multicultural, sexually liberated society. But the example of Catholicism’s rivals suggests that the church might well be much worse off if it had simply refashioned itself to fit the prevailing values of the age. That’s what the denominations of mainline Protestantism have done, across the last four decades — and instead of gaining members, they’ve dwindled into irrelevance.
The Vatican of Benedict and John Paul II, by contrast, has striven to maintain continuity with Christian tradition, even at the risk of seeming reactionary and out of touch. This has cost the church its once-privileged place in the Western establishment, and earned it the scorn of fashionable opinion. But continuity, not swift and perhaps foolhardy adaptation, has always been the papacy’s purpose, and the secret of its lasting strength.
Catholics do not — should not, must not — look to the Vatican to supply the church with all its saints and visionaries and prophets. (Indeed, many of Catholicism’s greatest figures have had fraught relationships with the Holy See — including John Henry Newman, the man beatified on Sunday.) They look to Rome instead to safeguard what those visionaries achieved, to guard Catholicism’s inheritance, and provide a symbol of unity for a far-flung, billion-member church. They look to Rome for the long view: for the wisdom that not all change is for the better, and that some revolutions are better outlasted than accepted.
On Saturday, Benedict addressed Britain’s politicians in the very hall where Sir Thomas More, the great Catholic martyr, was condemned to death for opposing the reformation of Henry VIII. It was an extraordinary moment, and a reminder of the resilience of Catholicism, across a gulf of years that’s consumed thrones, nations, entire civilizations.
This, above all, is why the crowds cheered for the pope, in Edinburgh and London and Birmingham — because almost five centuries after the Catholic faith was apparently strangled in Britain, their church is still alive.
The 35th Toronto International Film Festival
Sept. 16, 2010
Director George Hickenlooper arrives for the screening of "Casino Jack" at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto.
Nathan Denette-AP
Related Content:
• 'The Town,' 'Casino Jack' and 'Client 9' take the stage at Toronto Film Festival
• Washington Post Photo Store
• More Photos and Videos
Director George Hickenlooper arrives for the screening of "Casino Jack" at the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto.
Nathan Denette-AP
Related Content:
• 'The Town,' 'Casino Jack' and 'Client 9' take the stage at Toronto Film Festival
• Washington Post Photo Store
• More Photos and Videos
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Sexy actresses of world's first 3-D porn film
Sexy actresses of world's first 3-D porn film
A sexy actress of 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy poses in a film studio. [Sina.com]
A sexy actress of 3-D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy poses in a film studio. [Sina.com]
Lady Gaga's meat dress
Lady Gaga wears a meat dress at MTV Video Music Awards in Los Angeles, California September 12, 2010.[Sina.com]
Han Yifei poses fully naked for Chinese National Basketball Team
Han Yifei, one of the school beauties of Beijing Film Academy, once promised to pose fully naked if China National Basketball Team would advance to the second round from the group at the basketball world championship in Turkey. After National Basketball Team magically advanced, she kept her promise and pose fully naked. [qq.com]
Saturday, September 18, 2010
How Do I Ask For a Happy Ending?
First, open Google. Then find the right codes to let her know exactly how relaxed you want to be.
By Stacey Grenrock Woods
lucy liu charlies angels massage
Columbia Pictures
I don't want to get a happy ending with my massage, but let's say I did. Is that even a possibility?
I don't want to answer this, but let's say I did. First, I'd direct you to comedian and radio host Jim Norton, who wrote extensively on the subject in his book, but I wouldn't mention the name of the book because I believe that if you give a man a title, he'll come once, but if you teach him to Google, he'll come forever. With that in mind, I'd tell you to get a subscription to the Internet and find yourself a masseuse (noun, from Old French poss and ability), as opposed to a massage therapist (noun, from Middle English no and chance). Then I'd tell you to look for established code words like generous and roses. I'd tell you to ask how relaxed you'll be at the end of the massage, and if she says you'll be completely relaxed, you might then ask if draping is mandatory. If she says it isn't, I'd tell you to keep yourself exposed and ask her, at the appropriate time, to rub your glutes (noun, from Al Gore ass). Then I'd tell you to wave a crisp hundred or two around while winking and motioning to your crotch, but if at any time she looks confused or offended (from the Modern English lawsuit), I'd tell you to make up some excuse, get the hell out of there, deny everything, and forget my name.
Got a sex question of your own? E-mail it to us at sex@esquire.com.
PLUS: How to Give a Good Massage >>
By Stacey Grenrock Woods
lucy liu charlies angels massageColumbia Pictures
I don't want to get a happy ending with my massage, but let's say I did. Is that even a possibility?
I don't want to answer this, but let's say I did. First, I'd direct you to comedian and radio host Jim Norton, who wrote extensively on the subject in his book, but I wouldn't mention the name of the book because I believe that if you give a man a title, he'll come once, but if you teach him to Google, he'll come forever. With that in mind, I'd tell you to get a subscription to the Internet and find yourself a masseuse (noun, from Old French poss and ability), as opposed to a massage therapist (noun, from Middle English no and chance). Then I'd tell you to look for established code words like generous and roses. I'd tell you to ask how relaxed you'll be at the end of the massage, and if she says you'll be completely relaxed, you might then ask if draping is mandatory. If she says it isn't, I'd tell you to keep yourself exposed and ask her, at the appropriate time, to rub your glutes (noun, from Al Gore ass). Then I'd tell you to wave a crisp hundred or two around while winking and motioning to your crotch, but if at any time she looks confused or offended (from the Modern English lawsuit), I'd tell you to make up some excuse, get the hell out of there, deny everything, and forget my name.
Got a sex question of your own? E-mail it to us at sex@esquire.com.
PLUS: How to Give a Good Massage >>
4/8/2009 WELL; Divorce, It Seems, Can Make You Ill
August 4, 2009
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Married people tend to be healthier than single people. But what happens when a marriage ends?
New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse's death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry.
And in terms of health, it's not better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Middle-age people who never married have fewer chronic health problems than those who were divorced or widowed.
The findings, from a national study of 8,652 men and women in their 50s and early 60s, suggest that the physical stress of marital loss continues long after the emotional wounds have healed. While this does not mean that people should stay married at all costs, it does show that marital history is an important indicator of health, and that the newly single need to be especially vigilant about stress management and exercise, even if they remarry.
''When your spouse is getting sick and about to die or your marriage is getting bad and about to die, your stress levels go up,'' said Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago and an author of the study, which appears in the September issue of The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. ''You're not sleeping well, your diet gets worse, you can't exercise, you can't see your friends. It's a whole package of awful events.''
The health benefits of marriage, documented by a wealth of research, appear to stem from several factors. Married people tend to be better off financially and can share in a spouse's employer health benefits. And wives, in particular, act as gatekeepers for a husband's health, scheduling appointments and noticing changes that may signal a health problem. Spouses can offer logistical support, like taking care of children while a partner exercises or shuttling a partner to and from the doctor's office.
But in the latest study, researchers sought to gauge the health effects of divorce, widowhood and remarriage in a large cohort of people over time.
Among the 8,652 people studied, more than half were still married to their first spouse. About 40 percent had been divorced or widowed; about half of that group were remarried by the time of the study. About 4 percent had never married.
Over all, men and women who had experienced divorce or the death of a spouse reported about 20 percent more chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, compared with those who had been continuously married. Previously married people were also more likely to have mobility problems, like difficulty climbing stairs or walking a meaningful distance.
While remarrying led to some improvement in health, the study showed that most married people who became single never fully recovered from the physical declines associated with marital loss. Compared with those who had been continuously married, people in second marriages had 12 percent more chronic health problems and 19 percent more mobility problems. A second marriage did appear to heal emotional wounds: remarried people had only slightly more depressive symptoms than those continuously married.
The study does not prove that the loss of a marriage causes health problems, only that the two are associated. It may be that people who don't exercise, eat poorly and can't manage stress are also more likely to divorce. Still, researchers note that because the effect is seen in both divorced and widowed people, the data strongly suggest a causal relationship.
One reason may be changes at the cellular level during times of high stress. In an Ohio State University study, scientists analyzed blood samples of people undergoing the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. The research focused on telomeres, which insulate and protect the ends of chromosomes; with aging, telomeres shorten and the activity of a related enzyme also declines.
Compared with a control group, the Alzheimer's caregivers showed telomere patterns associated with a four- to eight-year shortening of life span. Dr. Waite said the stress of divorce or widowhood might take a similar toll, leading to chronic health and mobility problems.
None of this suggests that spouses should stay in a bad marriage for the sake of health. Marital troubles can lead to physical ones, too.
In a series of experiments, scientists at Ohio State studied the relationship between marital strife and immune response, as measured by the time it takes for a wound to heal. The researchers recruited married couples who submitted to a small suction device that left eight tiny blisters on the arm. The couples then engaged in different types of discussions -- sometimes positive and supportive, at other times focused on a topic of conflict.
After a marital conflict, the wounds took a full day longer to heal. Among couples who exhibited high levels of hostility, the wound healing took two days longer than with those who showed less animosity.
''I would argue that if you can't fix a marriage you're better off out of it,'' said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an Ohio State scientist who is an author of much of the research. ''With a divorce you're disrupting your life, but a long-term acrimonious marriage also is very bad.''
DRAWING (DRAWING BY STUART BRADFORD)
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Married people tend to be healthier than single people. But what happens when a marriage ends?
New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse's death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry.
And in terms of health, it's not better to have married and lost than never to have married at all. Middle-age people who never married have fewer chronic health problems than those who were divorced or widowed.
The findings, from a national study of 8,652 men and women in their 50s and early 60s, suggest that the physical stress of marital loss continues long after the emotional wounds have healed. While this does not mean that people should stay married at all costs, it does show that marital history is an important indicator of health, and that the newly single need to be especially vigilant about stress management and exercise, even if they remarry.
''When your spouse is getting sick and about to die or your marriage is getting bad and about to die, your stress levels go up,'' said Linda Waite, a sociology professor at the University of Chicago and an author of the study, which appears in the September issue of The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. ''You're not sleeping well, your diet gets worse, you can't exercise, you can't see your friends. It's a whole package of awful events.''
The health benefits of marriage, documented by a wealth of research, appear to stem from several factors. Married people tend to be better off financially and can share in a spouse's employer health benefits. And wives, in particular, act as gatekeepers for a husband's health, scheduling appointments and noticing changes that may signal a health problem. Spouses can offer logistical support, like taking care of children while a partner exercises or shuttling a partner to and from the doctor's office.
But in the latest study, researchers sought to gauge the health effects of divorce, widowhood and remarriage in a large cohort of people over time.
Among the 8,652 people studied, more than half were still married to their first spouse. About 40 percent had been divorced or widowed; about half of that group were remarried by the time of the study. About 4 percent had never married.
Over all, men and women who had experienced divorce or the death of a spouse reported about 20 percent more chronic health problems like heart disease, diabetes and cancer, compared with those who had been continuously married. Previously married people were also more likely to have mobility problems, like difficulty climbing stairs or walking a meaningful distance.
While remarrying led to some improvement in health, the study showed that most married people who became single never fully recovered from the physical declines associated with marital loss. Compared with those who had been continuously married, people in second marriages had 12 percent more chronic health problems and 19 percent more mobility problems. A second marriage did appear to heal emotional wounds: remarried people had only slightly more depressive symptoms than those continuously married.
The study does not prove that the loss of a marriage causes health problems, only that the two are associated. It may be that people who don't exercise, eat poorly and can't manage stress are also more likely to divorce. Still, researchers note that because the effect is seen in both divorced and widowed people, the data strongly suggest a causal relationship.
One reason may be changes at the cellular level during times of high stress. In an Ohio State University study, scientists analyzed blood samples of people undergoing the stress of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. The research focused on telomeres, which insulate and protect the ends of chromosomes; with aging, telomeres shorten and the activity of a related enzyme also declines.
Compared with a control group, the Alzheimer's caregivers showed telomere patterns associated with a four- to eight-year shortening of life span. Dr. Waite said the stress of divorce or widowhood might take a similar toll, leading to chronic health and mobility problems.
None of this suggests that spouses should stay in a bad marriage for the sake of health. Marital troubles can lead to physical ones, too.
In a series of experiments, scientists at Ohio State studied the relationship between marital strife and immune response, as measured by the time it takes for a wound to heal. The researchers recruited married couples who submitted to a small suction device that left eight tiny blisters on the arm. The couples then engaged in different types of discussions -- sometimes positive and supportive, at other times focused on a topic of conflict.
After a marital conflict, the wounds took a full day longer to heal. Among couples who exhibited high levels of hostility, the wound healing took two days longer than with those who showed less animosity.
''I would argue that if you can't fix a marriage you're better off out of it,'' said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, an Ohio State scientist who is an author of much of the research. ''With a divorce you're disrupting your life, but a long-term acrimonious marriage also is very bad.''
DRAWING (DRAWING BY STUART BRADFORD)
Fan Bingbing's new enchanting look
Following the "Dragon Robe", which stunned Cannes this year, actress Fan Bingbing recently showed off another Chinese-styled gown that combined the elements of blue and white porcelain. [Sohu.com]
Scorecard | Calvin Klein Collection Wins!
Women's Fashion By ALISON S. COHN September 17, 2010, 7:45 pm
And… curtain! As New York fashion week’s marquee actors take their bows in the city’s newest Theatre and Stage, Scorecard notes in the final reductive tally that there’s no way American fashion’s perennial practitioner of architectural minimalism, Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa, wouldn’t beat them all in the square the circle game.
Calvin Klein Collection
Designer: Francisco Costa
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html#spring_2011_klein_calvin Thursday, Sept. 15, 205 West 39th Street
Photos: slide show
“Yet another minimalist celebration of simple lines, white and then more white.” (AFP)
“Easy, fluid and chic have been three of the favorite words at New York Fashion Week — and that was before the Calvin Klein collection debuted. Now, you can add sexy, smart and glamorous.” (Associated Press)
“His hyper-obsessive focus on silhouette and shape resulted in a collection for Calvin Klein that will make his particular take on minimalism the maximum statment to take away from New York’s Fashion Week.” (Daily Front Row)
“A sultry, sexy and simple (of course) collection.” (ELLEuk.com)
“The house famed for its minimalist aesthetic unveiled its sparest chic in eons.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“Something happened this season to lighten the whole thing up and, if Francisco ever spent a sleepless night worrying that the feminine softness that bordered on flirtatiousness might be a compromise too far I think he should rest assured it did not.” (Grazia Daily)
“Mr. Costa got simpler, but no less arresting.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Everything about the show was a minimalist’s dream.” (Huffington Post)
“His whites are just right.” (On The Runway)
“Now that the fashion world has come back around to the less-is-more ethos, he’s gone and turned out a superconfident, uncompromising collection that shows everybody else how it’s done.” (Style.com)
“Some designers might dabble in minimalism, but at Calvin Klein stark subtlety is a religion. And as that sect’s high priest, creative director Francisco Costa delivered an assured, focused, and refined spring collection.” (Vogue.com)
“Basing his spring/summer 2011 collection for Calvin Klein on ’structural systems,’ designer Francisco Costa sent out a collection that looked deceptively simple, but was anything but.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Pure is the way designers like to describe either a clean look or one they feel is very true to their aesthetic, very them. Usually it comes off as fashion speak, but in the case of Francisco Costa’s spring collection for Calvin Klein, there’s really no other word.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Oscar de la Renta
Designer: Oscar de la Renta
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, 583 Park Avenue
Photos: slide show
“Oscar de la Renta’s Spring 2011 collection nods back to the [Greenbriar]’s glory days, when The Platters were all the range and even bingo night was black-tie — although it’s a bit too sophisticated for today’s casino.” (Daily Front Row)
“De la Renta made his somewhat outdated, though obviously still profitable, mission all the more retro by showing a series of fifties inspired coats, cardigans, day suits and ball gowns befitting a society lady or debutante circa the Eisenhower years.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“The red carpet luminaries and the ladies of the society circuit who he dresses will have plenty to choose from.” (Heard on the Runway)
“If there was a theme, it was prom.” (On The Runway)
“His reliance on certain posh props … made today’s somewhat uneven collection feel more old-fashioned than it might otherwise have.” (Style.com)
“De la Renta’s easy command of luxurious couture effects produced just the sort of refinements that modern swans … appreciate.” (Vogue.com)
“A sublime, strangely cinematic experience … Today, as a storm erupted outside spoiling the coiffed dos of numerous ladies in attendance, de la Renta’s immaculate ensembles for spring/summer 2011 sailed onto the catwalk, appearing larger than life. ” (Vogue.com UK)
“A beautiful and savvily controlled collection, very romantic and very Oscar.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isaac Mizrahi
Designer: Isaac Mizrahi
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Theatre
Photos: slide show
“Mizrahi’s models followed the general tone of the season with clear colors, femininity and refined elegance.” (AFP)
“Isaac Mizrahi couldn’t be bothered with little details — bows, buttons, pockets and the like — for his spring styles? Mizrahi called his collection ‘IM Xerox,’ and most of the embellishment, save the sequins, were printed onto the fabric.” (Associated Press)
“He could have been saying something about how our reliance on electronic devices has changed our perception of reality, or he could have been thinking that there really is no such thing as an original idea in fashion.” (On The Runway)
“The copy concept is something of an old standard itself. Perhaps that was the point.” (Style.com)
“This man understands that his women like pretty.” (StyleList)
“With a collection this clever, a clever set would have been redundant.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Isaac Mizrahi is a copy cat and proud of it.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Naeem Khan
Designer: Naeem Khan
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Stage
Photos: slide show
“Was it raining? Probably. Was the front-row on its last leg after an intense week of shows? Of course. But nobody noticed — or cared — about circumstance during Naeem Khan’s rejuvenating Spring 2011 collection.” (Daily Front Row)
“Big-haired models stomped by in covet-worthy dresses featuring bright colors, flowing shapes, and intricate beading that looked to be inspired, at least in part, by some far-flung tropical destination.” (Huffington Post)
“Roberto Cavalli, are you sitting down? Naeem Khan dove into tropical waters for Spring, focusing almost exclusively on eveningwear options for the Palm Beach-to-Cannes set, with a big splash of Saint-Tropez party gear thrown in, too.” (Style.com)
“A feast of bright 70’s colors and over-the-top prints.” (The Thread)
“Glitz and glamour are always key to a Naeem Khan collection. And this season he gave it a terrific safari twist.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Ralph Lauren
Designer: Ralph Laurern
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Skylight Studio, 275 Hudson Street
Photos: slide show
“Ralph Lauren brought all the glamour that the Wild West probably never had to the runway.” (AFP)
“Ralph Lauren’s romance with the American West continues.” (Associated Press)
“Welcome to the Ralph Lauren ranch, where the buffalo roam and the cowboys and girls are the chicest you’ll find in the American West (or any region, for that matter).” (Daily Front Row)
“Despite a lone inspiration on the New York schedule, Lauren ticked off many of the recurring trends seen so far.” (ELLEuk.com)
“Raw and refined.” (FabSugar)
“It was luxe Western wear for the city woman with a summer home in Santa Fe.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“A Navajo/safari hybrid.” (Grazia Daily)
“For Spring, Mr. Lauren will take us back to about 1890 –- cowgirls and Indians, but not in the bow-and-arrows sense.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Of all his expressions of Americana, of all his appropriating its regional and historic garb, the Western motif is really where Mr. Lauren shines.” (On The Runway)
“A fine show.” (The New York Times)
“A smooth gallop from start to finish.” (Style.com)
“This pure yee-haw moment bordered on costumey, but could certainly enchant the right frontierswoman.” (StyleList)
“A country dance of formal prairie dresses and blouses in a whitewashed palette, with over-the-top-Texas longhorns and golden sparkle peppered in.” (The Thread)
“Lauren do-si-doed with a very Ralph, very American muse — the cowgirl — putting together a collection that was full of prairie romance.” (Vogue.com)
“Would look as at home on Rodeo Drive as it would on the range.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Ralph Lauren showed one of his best women’s collections in memory.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Related Posts
Resort Scorecard Stella McCartney Wins!
Scorecard Michael Kors Wins!
Scorecard Women’s Spring Fashion 2009
Scorecard Calvin Klein Wins!
Scorecard Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein Et Al.
.
And… curtain! As New York fashion week’s marquee actors take their bows in the city’s newest Theatre and Stage, Scorecard notes in the final reductive tally that there’s no way American fashion’s perennial practitioner of architectural minimalism, Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa, wouldn’t beat them all in the square the circle game.
Related
Spring 2011 Fashion Week
Calvin Klein Collection
Designer: Francisco Costa
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/style/fashionweek/runway.html#spring_2011_klein_calvin Thursday, Sept. 15, 205 West 39th Street
Photos: slide show
“Yet another minimalist celebration of simple lines, white and then more white.” (AFP)
“Easy, fluid and chic have been three of the favorite words at New York Fashion Week — and that was before the Calvin Klein collection debuted. Now, you can add sexy, smart and glamorous.” (Associated Press)
“His hyper-obsessive focus on silhouette and shape resulted in a collection for Calvin Klein that will make his particular take on minimalism the maximum statment to take away from New York’s Fashion Week.” (Daily Front Row)
“A sultry, sexy and simple (of course) collection.” (ELLEuk.com)
“The house famed for its minimalist aesthetic unveiled its sparest chic in eons.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“Something happened this season to lighten the whole thing up and, if Francisco ever spent a sleepless night worrying that the feminine softness that bordered on flirtatiousness might be a compromise too far I think he should rest assured it did not.” (Grazia Daily)
“Mr. Costa got simpler, but no less arresting.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Everything about the show was a minimalist’s dream.” (Huffington Post)
“His whites are just right.” (On The Runway)
“Now that the fashion world has come back around to the less-is-more ethos, he’s gone and turned out a superconfident, uncompromising collection that shows everybody else how it’s done.” (Style.com)
“Some designers might dabble in minimalism, but at Calvin Klein stark subtlety is a religion. And as that sect’s high priest, creative director Francisco Costa delivered an assured, focused, and refined spring collection.” (Vogue.com)
“Basing his spring/summer 2011 collection for Calvin Klein on ’structural systems,’ designer Francisco Costa sent out a collection that looked deceptively simple, but was anything but.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Pure is the way designers like to describe either a clean look or one they feel is very true to their aesthetic, very them. Usually it comes off as fashion speak, but in the case of Francisco Costa’s spring collection for Calvin Klein, there’s really no other word.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Oscar de la Renta
Designer: Oscar de la Renta
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, 583 Park Avenue
Photos: slide show
“Oscar de la Renta’s Spring 2011 collection nods back to the [Greenbriar]’s glory days, when The Platters were all the range and even bingo night was black-tie — although it’s a bit too sophisticated for today’s casino.” (Daily Front Row)
“De la Renta made his somewhat outdated, though obviously still profitable, mission all the more retro by showing a series of fifties inspired coats, cardigans, day suits and ball gowns befitting a society lady or debutante circa the Eisenhower years.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“The red carpet luminaries and the ladies of the society circuit who he dresses will have plenty to choose from.” (Heard on the Runway)
“If there was a theme, it was prom.” (On The Runway)
“His reliance on certain posh props … made today’s somewhat uneven collection feel more old-fashioned than it might otherwise have.” (Style.com)
“De la Renta’s easy command of luxurious couture effects produced just the sort of refinements that modern swans … appreciate.” (Vogue.com)
“A sublime, strangely cinematic experience … Today, as a storm erupted outside spoiling the coiffed dos of numerous ladies in attendance, de la Renta’s immaculate ensembles for spring/summer 2011 sailed onto the catwalk, appearing larger than life. ” (Vogue.com UK)
“A beautiful and savvily controlled collection, very romantic and very Oscar.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isaac Mizrahi
Designer: Isaac Mizrahi
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Theatre
Photos: slide show
“Mizrahi’s models followed the general tone of the season with clear colors, femininity and refined elegance.” (AFP)
“Isaac Mizrahi couldn’t be bothered with little details — bows, buttons, pockets and the like — for his spring styles? Mizrahi called his collection ‘IM Xerox,’ and most of the embellishment, save the sequins, were printed onto the fabric.” (Associated Press)
“He could have been saying something about how our reliance on electronic devices has changed our perception of reality, or he could have been thinking that there really is no such thing as an original idea in fashion.” (On The Runway)
“The copy concept is something of an old standard itself. Perhaps that was the point.” (Style.com)
“This man understands that his women like pretty.” (StyleList)
“With a collection this clever, a clever set would have been redundant.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Isaac Mizrahi is a copy cat and proud of it.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Naeem Khan
Designer: Naeem Khan
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Lincoln Center, The Stage
Photos: slide show
“Was it raining? Probably. Was the front-row on its last leg after an intense week of shows? Of course. But nobody noticed — or cared — about circumstance during Naeem Khan’s rejuvenating Spring 2011 collection.” (Daily Front Row)
“Big-haired models stomped by in covet-worthy dresses featuring bright colors, flowing shapes, and intricate beading that looked to be inspired, at least in part, by some far-flung tropical destination.” (Huffington Post)
“Roberto Cavalli, are you sitting down? Naeem Khan dove into tropical waters for Spring, focusing almost exclusively on eveningwear options for the Palm Beach-to-Cannes set, with a big splash of Saint-Tropez party gear thrown in, too.” (Style.com)
“A feast of bright 70’s colors and over-the-top prints.” (The Thread)
“Glitz and glamour are always key to a Naeem Khan collection. And this season he gave it a terrific safari twist.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Ralph Lauren
Designer: Ralph Laurern
Date and Location: Thursday, Sept. 15, Skylight Studio, 275 Hudson Street
Photos: slide show
“Ralph Lauren brought all the glamour that the Wild West probably never had to the runway.” (AFP)
“Ralph Lauren’s romance with the American West continues.” (Associated Press)
“Welcome to the Ralph Lauren ranch, where the buffalo roam and the cowboys and girls are the chicest you’ll find in the American West (or any region, for that matter).” (Daily Front Row)
“Despite a lone inspiration on the New York schedule, Lauren ticked off many of the recurring trends seen so far.” (ELLEuk.com)
“Raw and refined.” (FabSugar)
“It was luxe Western wear for the city woman with a summer home in Santa Fe.” (Fashion Wire Daily)
“A Navajo/safari hybrid.” (Grazia Daily)
“For Spring, Mr. Lauren will take us back to about 1890 –- cowgirls and Indians, but not in the bow-and-arrows sense.” (Heard on the Runway)
“Of all his expressions of Americana, of all his appropriating its regional and historic garb, the Western motif is really where Mr. Lauren shines.” (On The Runway)
“A fine show.” (The New York Times)
“A smooth gallop from start to finish.” (Style.com)
“This pure yee-haw moment bordered on costumey, but could certainly enchant the right frontierswoman.” (StyleList)
“A country dance of formal prairie dresses and blouses in a whitewashed palette, with over-the-top-Texas longhorns and golden sparkle peppered in.” (The Thread)
“Lauren do-si-doed with a very Ralph, very American muse — the cowgirl — putting together a collection that was full of prairie romance.” (Vogue.com)
“Would look as at home on Rodeo Drive as it would on the range.” (Vogue.com UK)
“Ralph Lauren showed one of his best women’s collections in memory.” (Women’s Wear Daily)
Related Posts
Resort Scorecard Stella McCartney Wins!
Scorecard Michael Kors Wins!
Scorecard Women’s Spring Fashion 2009
Scorecard Calvin Klein Wins!
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A Beef With Gaga
Culture, Women's Fashion|By MAURA EGAN| September 16, 2010, 10:17 am
Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
I’m not one to follow the fashion follies of Lady Gaga, but the meaty getup the singer wore to the MTV Video Music Awards the other night made me think of another artist who has been working in carnivorous creations for quite some time.
In 2004, the Turkish-born photographer Pinar Yolacan presented “Perishables,” a series of portraits of older women posing in various outfits made from meat — one woman models a sweater with honeycombed tripe sleeves, another wears a Victorian style buttoned-up blouse garnished with chicken feet at the waist. What makes these pieces more beautiful than grotesque (for me, at least) is the way Yolacan delicately blends flesh with fabric. The artist, who did a stint at Central Saint Martins in London, elegantly drapes the clothing on the subjects’ bodies; the flesh of the meat eerily matches the skin of the model — wrinkled, crinkled and creased. There is a real beauty in Yolacan’s display of decay.
Lady Gaga’s ensemble, on the other hand, was created by the Los Angeles-based designer Franc Fernandez (it was commissioned by the singer’s stylist, Nicola Formichetti), who wrapped 50 pounds of sirloin around a corset structure. Rather than Gaga’s usual stab at the surreal, the marbled meat pattern and the strange beefy tails flapping at the bottom suggested some kind of late seventies tie dye rocker chick outfit. And although the butcher string on the steak stilettos was a clever touch, Gaga’s reason for wearing the outfit — “If we don’t stand up for what we believe in, if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones” — was pretty much malarkey in my book. In fact, the most outrageous gesture on her part was having Cher hold her bedazzled meat clutch during her acceptance speech.
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Planet Gaga | A Cosmic Look
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Los Angeles Dispatch | Will Lemon at Eighth Veil Gallery
.
Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesI’m not one to follow the fashion follies of Lady Gaga, but the meaty getup the singer wore to the MTV Video Music Awards the other night made me think of another artist who has been working in carnivorous creations for quite some time.
In 2004, the Turkish-born photographer Pinar Yolacan presented “Perishables,” a series of portraits of older women posing in various outfits made from meat — one woman models a sweater with honeycombed tripe sleeves, another wears a Victorian style buttoned-up blouse garnished with chicken feet at the waist. What makes these pieces more beautiful than grotesque (for me, at least) is the way Yolacan delicately blends flesh with fabric. The artist, who did a stint at Central Saint Martins in London, elegantly drapes the clothing on the subjects’ bodies; the flesh of the meat eerily matches the skin of the model — wrinkled, crinkled and creased. There is a real beauty in Yolacan’s display of decay.
Lady Gaga’s ensemble, on the other hand, was created by the Los Angeles-based designer Franc Fernandez (it was commissioned by the singer’s stylist, Nicola Formichetti), who wrapped 50 pounds of sirloin around a corset structure. Rather than Gaga’s usual stab at the surreal, the marbled meat pattern and the strange beefy tails flapping at the bottom suggested some kind of late seventies tie dye rocker chick outfit. And although the butcher string on the steak stilettos was a clever touch, Gaga’s reason for wearing the outfit — “If we don’t stand up for what we believe in, if we don’t fight for our rights, pretty soon we’re going to have as much rights as the meat on our bones” — was pretty much malarkey in my book. In fact, the most outrageous gesture on her part was having Cher hold her bedazzled meat clutch during her acceptance speech.
Related Posts
Meet Mr. Gaga | The Stylist Nicola Formichetti
Planet Gaga | A Cosmic Look
Chic in Review | Valentino for Gap
Chic in Review | Going Gaga for Halloween
Los Angeles Dispatch | Will Lemon at Eighth Veil Gallery
.
Grass Fed | West Coastin’
FOOD
TRAVEL
By PETER MEEHAN
June 29, 2010, 1:43 pm
Cows grazing at Big Sur.
The sun-stunned effects of a California tour-cation have led to a complete breakdown in the interview-transcription machinery here at Grass Fed, so I’m phoning in this week’s entry with what the Dining Section editor Pete Wells once railed against as a grilled cheese blog post: a post about a bunch of stuff I ate. I promise some fine and interesting stuff in the weeks to come, but for now, a litany of things I ate on the West Coast, presented, confusingly enough, in a chronological fashion that follows a little three-show tour my band did: Big Sur, San Francisco, Los Angeles.
I guess we can start with waking up in San Francisco. We stopped at Four Barrel for coffee and snacks to take on the road. The last time I was there, Four Barrel was just a espresso machine on a loading dock in the alley behind what is now the gloriously airy, warehouse-y space. I don’t know why, but I feel like the coffee was better back then, which is not to say that what we got was bad, but it wasn’t as epic as the place’s reputation had led me to expect. We also got a bag of some kind of fancy doughnuts that were over-fried, over-flavored and too soft. Hrrrphm.
On the way to Big Sur, I eyed a pointless chicken-salad sandwich at coffee shop in a minimall complex in Monterey and didn’t eat it. I was more interested in a group of protestors waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and holding signs about Arizona getting it right on immigration. Funny that they were doing it at the intersection of a luxury mall and a road that led more or less only to Big Sur, which is richer and whiter than the intersections they could have found a short drive to the north, in Castroville or Gilroy, two agricultural centers where Mexican laborers pick the artichokes and garlic that are the reasons those towns are famous.
In Big Sur, we breezed through the Big Sur Bakery, where I hoovered down a piece of pizza covered in a thick carpet of stewed greens — maybe too healthy a snack for the mood I was in. (But it led to a conversation in which I learned that the movie “Popeye” is something I really should go back to. Robin Williams scares me, but Altman makes it sound promising.)
Pete Nolan and I played as Spectre Folk, the first of nine bands on the bill at the FolkYeah!!! Woodsist Festival at the Henry Miller Memorial Library. (It was one of the greatest days of my adult life — my girlfriend and our six-month-old and bunch of friends were there — and it was by far the best festival I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. Every band played a good set, and I was especially into Moon Duo, Kurt Vile, Woods and Real Estate.)
The Ambrosiaburger at Nepenthe; pasta salad at the band dinner; corned beef sandwich at Langer’s.
I was starving after our set and offered to help a girl laying out a backstage spread (and by “backstage” I mean “back porch”; the Henry Miller Library not being such a formal place) spread of Trader Joe’s booty. She sent me to wash the vegetables, and at the sink I met a serious, bearded guy named Leif who was preparing food that would be sold to attendees as well as at the communal dinner for the bands. Leif’s got a blog that details his multifarious dealings in the food world — an agenda of dinners, talks, sojourns and meet-ups that made me feel positively lazy when I eventually checked it out.
The pasta salad he cooked for the band dinner was, against all odds (or at least against the anti-pasta-salad prejudice that I think I picked up from Pete Wells), killer: filling, oily in the right way, piquant in the “refreshingly interesting” sense of the world. I ate two plates.
The next morning we woke up at Deetjen’s, which is one of the finest places on earth I know to wake up at, in part because breakfast there is pitch-perfect: the vibe is friendly and family and warm, the cozy warren of rooms makes every grouping of tables an intimate set, and diners all talk to and smile at each other because everybody knows they’re in the place to be.
Because I like to feel a groaning sense of fullness almost all the time, I went for the two eggs and toast and a side of buttermilk pancakes. I always go with chicken-apple sausage for my morning meat at Deetjen’s, even though I’m usually a sunrise porker. After that it was off to lightly sear ourselves in the sun on the beach at Andrew Molera State Park. I missed lunch, made it up with a vegetarian burrito from a convenience store along Highway 1, and then counted down the hours to dinner at Nepenthe.
You know Nepenthe if you’ve been to Big Sur; it’s perched on a cliff, affording diners a view of the coast to south and the Pacific to the west in a manner that’s so majestic I’m typically reduced to trying to capture it on a crummy camera rather than just breathing it in. Nepenthe’s got a very California menu — New American, I guess would be one way to call it; wandering, another — but, like so many tourists, I go there for the burger.
The burger at Nepenthe is called the Ambrosiaburger, after the “special sauce” that gets slathered on it. (There’s a recipe for it on the restaurant’s site; prepare to be underwhelmed by what goes into brewing up the sauce of the gods.) It’s served on a “French” roll that’s pale and soft enough to make a Frenchman blush. And while that description shouldn’t, in my mind, add up to a great burger, it does at Nepenthe. It might be the beef; the menu notes that it’s from local cows, and while driving to Big Sur, you’ll certainly see herds of them, cows living probably the best cow life possible, grazing wild with the Pacific laid wide open before them. I buy that happy cows taste better.
The next day we set off up the coast, back to San Francisco to play another show. We stopped for a bite at Phil’s Fish Market out on Moss Landing. Phil — I assume the bearded man who had his likeness plastered around the place like Mao at a Warhol show — had apparently had some sort of throwdown with Bobby Flay; most of the television monitors around the restaurant were frozen on a frame of him smiling and shucking, from what I assume was his spotlight moment with Mr. Flay.
The place is the size of an airplane hangar, with a retail operation (offering a surprising amount of East Coast fish) and two seating areas. The girl working the register told me the squid was local, so I ordered calamari, and, like most fried squid, it was good — though I do think the freshness of the squid made a difference. I also got a steamed artichoke, on account of our proximity to Castroville and because I’d had the best steamed artichoke of my life at Nepenthe the night before. Good, but not as good as the artichoke served on a cliff in Big Sur.
Onward to San Francisco. We played a show at the Hemlock that had a bad-acid vibe to it — in a good way? — and friends recommended that we pile out for an after-show meal at a place called Nopa. I had grilled cactus on the mind — I figured Nopa was short for nopales and we’d be eating tacos or burritos — but it turned out to be a fancy-ish, upstanding place with a hostess and nice waiters and a good wine list that happened to be open late. (Nopa is short for “north of the Panhandle” or something.)
I ordered some kind of pizza flatbread that was way too good for the hour, and a plate of fried tiny fish that we probably could have reloaded on at least a couple of times. I nabbed forkfuls of excellent roasted broccoli from my bandmate and a slice of a friend’s rib eye that was perfectly cooked and dressed in a sauce that would have made shoe leather edible. A couple of friends ordered burgers, which seemed appropriate for the hour, but man, the real food was the real deal.
We took off for L.A. the next morning and made it almost all the way down before giving into the highway-food gods with a breakfast burger stop at In-N-Out, a West Coast indulgence I’m not strong enough to deny myself at least once a trip. One of my favorite things about the place is that there’s always something to learn at an In-N-Out. Pete had never had a burger Animal style, so I got to hip him to that. He showed me that the bottom of every cup includes a Bible reference: my soda directed me, like so many men holding signs behind the goalposts at football games, to read John 3:15.
We stopped briefly in Santa Barbara to pick up Pete’s baby and wife and to eat at La Super Rica, which is undoubtedly my favorite Mexican restaurant in the continental United States. (Haters — there is a huge contingent of people who feel the place is hyperbolically overrated — please don’t feel the need to take over the comments on that point. I know you think I’m a sucker, a gringo, a tourist and a sheep.) More on La Super Rica and Santa Barbara here in the future — too much ground to cover in this post. The main thing to remember about La Super Rica is that they have best horchata on the planet and they’re closed on Wednesdays.
We got down to L.A. and hung out for a little while at the Echoplex, where Jeremy Earl and the Woodsist crew were putting on another Woodsist fest. There were a couple of food trucks parked out back — in the future all food in Los Angeles will be served from trucks — one of which was called the Greasy Wiener, which seemed to prompt more passers-by to snicker than to snack, but then again I was there early.
The L.A. show included local bands, like Sun Araw, who I would have loved to catch live, but we had to share a bill with Thurston Moore over at an awesome little art gallery called Synchronicity.
Our show wrapped up around midnight, and nobody was in the mood for trouble. I grabbed a 1 a.m. burrito at a place that called itself a “Mexicatessen”: Burrito King. The vegetarian burrito did not make me sick, but I’m not sure that’s an endorsement.
The tour-cation ended the next morning. I was heading up to Santa Barbara to meet up with my baby and my girl, riding the 2:55 p.m. Amtrak Surfliner up the coast. I had breakfast and coffee at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel that is like Deetjen’s in its transporting charms, though instead of offering a powerful connection with redwoods and nature, it offers the chance for even a breakfast guest to feel like a super Angeleno and scope out Rosario Dawson eating, Famke Janssen walking her dog and Thurston Moore having coffee.
I put a stake in the heart of my hunger for the rest of the day with my (shamefully) first visit to Langer’s, the famous delicatessen. Katz’s was around the corner from my apartment for the last 10 years in New York, so it’s deeply difficult for me to be in any way objective about deli supremacy. But, man. Langer’s is really good. They use bread that doesn’t taste like it was made in a copying machine. Langer’s corned beef melts in the mouth. They dispense meat in portions that do not immediately redirect all the conversations in the place toward coronary health. The servers are hyperfriendly. Is it better than Katz’s?
Oh no! Look how time flies. If I drink another one of these beers out of frosty mugs I’ll never make my train. See you next time.
Food, Music, Travel, Big Sur, Food, Grass Fed, Los Angeles, Peter Meehan, restaurants, San Francisco, Travel
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.
TRAVEL
By PETER MEEHAN
June 29, 2010, 1:43 pm
Cows grazing at Big Sur.The sun-stunned effects of a California tour-cation have led to a complete breakdown in the interview-transcription machinery here at Grass Fed, so I’m phoning in this week’s entry with what the Dining Section editor Pete Wells once railed against as a grilled cheese blog post: a post about a bunch of stuff I ate. I promise some fine and interesting stuff in the weeks to come, but for now, a litany of things I ate on the West Coast, presented, confusingly enough, in a chronological fashion that follows a little three-show tour my band did: Big Sur, San Francisco, Los Angeles.
I guess we can start with waking up in San Francisco. We stopped at Four Barrel for coffee and snacks to take on the road. The last time I was there, Four Barrel was just a espresso machine on a loading dock in the alley behind what is now the gloriously airy, warehouse-y space. I don’t know why, but I feel like the coffee was better back then, which is not to say that what we got was bad, but it wasn’t as epic as the place’s reputation had led me to expect. We also got a bag of some kind of fancy doughnuts that were over-fried, over-flavored and too soft. Hrrrphm.
On the way to Big Sur, I eyed a pointless chicken-salad sandwich at coffee shop in a minimall complex in Monterey and didn’t eat it. I was more interested in a group of protestors waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and holding signs about Arizona getting it right on immigration. Funny that they were doing it at the intersection of a luxury mall and a road that led more or less only to Big Sur, which is richer and whiter than the intersections they could have found a short drive to the north, in Castroville or Gilroy, two agricultural centers where Mexican laborers pick the artichokes and garlic that are the reasons those towns are famous.
In Big Sur, we breezed through the Big Sur Bakery, where I hoovered down a piece of pizza covered in a thick carpet of stewed greens — maybe too healthy a snack for the mood I was in. (But it led to a conversation in which I learned that the movie “Popeye” is something I really should go back to. Robin Williams scares me, but Altman makes it sound promising.)
Pete Nolan and I played as Spectre Folk, the first of nine bands on the bill at the FolkYeah!!! Woodsist Festival at the Henry Miller Memorial Library. (It was one of the greatest days of my adult life — my girlfriend and our six-month-old and bunch of friends were there — and it was by far the best festival I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. Every band played a good set, and I was especially into Moon Duo, Kurt Vile, Woods and Real Estate.)
The Ambrosiaburger at Nepenthe; pasta salad at the band dinner; corned beef sandwich at Langer’s.I was starving after our set and offered to help a girl laying out a backstage spread (and by “backstage” I mean “back porch”; the Henry Miller Library not being such a formal place) spread of Trader Joe’s booty. She sent me to wash the vegetables, and at the sink I met a serious, bearded guy named Leif who was preparing food that would be sold to attendees as well as at the communal dinner for the bands. Leif’s got a blog that details his multifarious dealings in the food world — an agenda of dinners, talks, sojourns and meet-ups that made me feel positively lazy when I eventually checked it out.
The pasta salad he cooked for the band dinner was, against all odds (or at least against the anti-pasta-salad prejudice that I think I picked up from Pete Wells), killer: filling, oily in the right way, piquant in the “refreshingly interesting” sense of the world. I ate two plates.
The next morning we woke up at Deetjen’s, which is one of the finest places on earth I know to wake up at, in part because breakfast there is pitch-perfect: the vibe is friendly and family and warm, the cozy warren of rooms makes every grouping of tables an intimate set, and diners all talk to and smile at each other because everybody knows they’re in the place to be.
Because I like to feel a groaning sense of fullness almost all the time, I went for the two eggs and toast and a side of buttermilk pancakes. I always go with chicken-apple sausage for my morning meat at Deetjen’s, even though I’m usually a sunrise porker. After that it was off to lightly sear ourselves in the sun on the beach at Andrew Molera State Park. I missed lunch, made it up with a vegetarian burrito from a convenience store along Highway 1, and then counted down the hours to dinner at Nepenthe.
You know Nepenthe if you’ve been to Big Sur; it’s perched on a cliff, affording diners a view of the coast to south and the Pacific to the west in a manner that’s so majestic I’m typically reduced to trying to capture it on a crummy camera rather than just breathing it in. Nepenthe’s got a very California menu — New American, I guess would be one way to call it; wandering, another — but, like so many tourists, I go there for the burger.
The burger at Nepenthe is called the Ambrosiaburger, after the “special sauce” that gets slathered on it. (There’s a recipe for it on the restaurant’s site; prepare to be underwhelmed by what goes into brewing up the sauce of the gods.) It’s served on a “French” roll that’s pale and soft enough to make a Frenchman blush. And while that description shouldn’t, in my mind, add up to a great burger, it does at Nepenthe. It might be the beef; the menu notes that it’s from local cows, and while driving to Big Sur, you’ll certainly see herds of them, cows living probably the best cow life possible, grazing wild with the Pacific laid wide open before them. I buy that happy cows taste better.
The next day we set off up the coast, back to San Francisco to play another show. We stopped for a bite at Phil’s Fish Market out on Moss Landing. Phil — I assume the bearded man who had his likeness plastered around the place like Mao at a Warhol show — had apparently had some sort of throwdown with Bobby Flay; most of the television monitors around the restaurant were frozen on a frame of him smiling and shucking, from what I assume was his spotlight moment with Mr. Flay.
The place is the size of an airplane hangar, with a retail operation (offering a surprising amount of East Coast fish) and two seating areas. The girl working the register told me the squid was local, so I ordered calamari, and, like most fried squid, it was good — though I do think the freshness of the squid made a difference. I also got a steamed artichoke, on account of our proximity to Castroville and because I’d had the best steamed artichoke of my life at Nepenthe the night before. Good, but not as good as the artichoke served on a cliff in Big Sur.
Onward to San Francisco. We played a show at the Hemlock that had a bad-acid vibe to it — in a good way? — and friends recommended that we pile out for an after-show meal at a place called Nopa. I had grilled cactus on the mind — I figured Nopa was short for nopales and we’d be eating tacos or burritos — but it turned out to be a fancy-ish, upstanding place with a hostess and nice waiters and a good wine list that happened to be open late. (Nopa is short for “north of the Panhandle” or something.)
I ordered some kind of pizza flatbread that was way too good for the hour, and a plate of fried tiny fish that we probably could have reloaded on at least a couple of times. I nabbed forkfuls of excellent roasted broccoli from my bandmate and a slice of a friend’s rib eye that was perfectly cooked and dressed in a sauce that would have made shoe leather edible. A couple of friends ordered burgers, which seemed appropriate for the hour, but man, the real food was the real deal.
We took off for L.A. the next morning and made it almost all the way down before giving into the highway-food gods with a breakfast burger stop at In-N-Out, a West Coast indulgence I’m not strong enough to deny myself at least once a trip. One of my favorite things about the place is that there’s always something to learn at an In-N-Out. Pete had never had a burger Animal style, so I got to hip him to that. He showed me that the bottom of every cup includes a Bible reference: my soda directed me, like so many men holding signs behind the goalposts at football games, to read John 3:15.
We stopped briefly in Santa Barbara to pick up Pete’s baby and wife and to eat at La Super Rica, which is undoubtedly my favorite Mexican restaurant in the continental United States. (Haters — there is a huge contingent of people who feel the place is hyperbolically overrated — please don’t feel the need to take over the comments on that point. I know you think I’m a sucker, a gringo, a tourist and a sheep.) More on La Super Rica and Santa Barbara here in the future — too much ground to cover in this post. The main thing to remember about La Super Rica is that they have best horchata on the planet and they’re closed on Wednesdays.
We got down to L.A. and hung out for a little while at the Echoplex, where Jeremy Earl and the Woodsist crew were putting on another Woodsist fest. There were a couple of food trucks parked out back — in the future all food in Los Angeles will be served from trucks — one of which was called the Greasy Wiener, which seemed to prompt more passers-by to snicker than to snack, but then again I was there early.
The L.A. show included local bands, like Sun Araw, who I would have loved to catch live, but we had to share a bill with Thurston Moore over at an awesome little art gallery called Synchronicity.
Our show wrapped up around midnight, and nobody was in the mood for trouble. I grabbed a 1 a.m. burrito at a place that called itself a “Mexicatessen”: Burrito King. The vegetarian burrito did not make me sick, but I’m not sure that’s an endorsement.
The tour-cation ended the next morning. I was heading up to Santa Barbara to meet up with my baby and my girl, riding the 2:55 p.m. Amtrak Surfliner up the coast. I had breakfast and coffee at the Chateau Marmont, a hotel that is like Deetjen’s in its transporting charms, though instead of offering a powerful connection with redwoods and nature, it offers the chance for even a breakfast guest to feel like a super Angeleno and scope out Rosario Dawson eating, Famke Janssen walking her dog and Thurston Moore having coffee.
I put a stake in the heart of my hunger for the rest of the day with my (shamefully) first visit to Langer’s, the famous delicatessen. Katz’s was around the corner from my apartment for the last 10 years in New York, so it’s deeply difficult for me to be in any way objective about deli supremacy. But, man. Langer’s is really good. They use bread that doesn’t taste like it was made in a copying machine. Langer’s corned beef melts in the mouth. They dispense meat in portions that do not immediately redirect all the conversations in the place toward coronary health. The servers are hyperfriendly. Is it better than Katz’s?
Oh no! Look how time flies. If I drink another one of these beers out of frosty mugs I’ll never make my train. See you next time.
Food, Music, Travel, Big Sur, Food, Grass Fed, Los Angeles, Peter Meehan, restaurants, San Francisco, Travel
Related Posts
Grass Fed Stinging Nettles
Grass Fed Edzo’s Burger Shop, Illinois
Grass Fed Chicken Soup for the Seoul
Now Serving Austin Eats
Eurofile Going Wild in the Baltics
.
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