I've Got 99 Problems, but Delta Skymiles Ain't One.

I had zero luck with the bit of business travel I did last week, due to the mashup of summer thunderstorms + LaGuardia which = delays.  Not Delta's fault, but annoying nonetheless.

So imagine my surprise when I got 2,500 extra SkyMiles from Delta for my troubles!  They certainly didn't need to do that, so I sent them a note thanking them (I'm a big believer in customer service working both ways).

This next bit is a bit overboard, though.  Still, it's nice.  But if Delta really wants to get on my goodside, they can tell the Port Authority to CLEAN THEIR FUCKING BATHROOMS once and a while.

 -------------------------------------------------------

Dear Ms. Blue Eyes,

RE: Case Number 4309491

Thank you for sharing your concerns regarding the service provided while
traveling with us.  On behalf of Delta Air Lines and Delta Connection
carrier, Shuttle America, it was very nice to receive your email
complimenting the service you received and I sincerely apologize for the
inconvenience caused due to the delay of our flight.

Your thoughtfulness in writing means a great deal to us.  Our goal is to
surpass our customer's expectations every day.  We appreciate your kind
comments and will continue to work hard to provide superior service.  We
believe our employees are our most important assets, and I am happy to
learn that they exceeded your expectations.  Be assured we take our
commitment to serving you very seriously, and we will continue to work
hard to provide superior service

Additionally, I understand importance of your time and the trouble you
experienced when your travel was negatively impacted due to the delay of
our flight for weather-related conditions.  Your feelings are important
to us, and I have shared your comments with the responsible leadership
team.

Ms. Blue Eyes, I want to thank you, again, for taking the time to write
regarding the service we provided.  Your future business as a SkyMiles
member is important to us, and I hope you will continue to choose Delta
for your air travel needs.

Sincerely,

Coordinator, Customer Care
Delta Air Lines
----------------------------------------------------------

Everything's Sunny in Toronto

Blue Eyes surprised me with a trip to Toronto for the Fourth of July weekend.  Last time I was there was in 1992 or 1993, for all of 48 hours, young, with no money.  I remember an overcast fall day, the CN Tower looming somewhere in the distance, and a place called the Moose Bar.  When we drove in from the airport, I was struck by the multitudes of gleaming new construction lining the lakefront.  There's been a hell of a lot of movement up north since I was last there.

Yet it's still so very Canada.  Waiting for a streetcar on King Street, we asked a couple passers-by if they knew how frequently the trolley came.

Helper 1: "Oh, it's a lot more frequent than the Queen Street streetcar."
Helper 2: "Yeah, that's true."
Helper 1: "Do you want me to look it up for you?"
Us: "No, that's not necessary."
Helper 1: "No, really, I can do it right here on my iPhone."
Us: "Truly not necessary."

And their version of razzing the opposing team (Phillies played the Jays) consisted of multiple iterations of the following:

"Hey Polanco!  You're a terrible player!"
"Yeah, you're horrible!"


A more creative quip came from a quartet of drunken twentysomethings that looked like they were members of the Royal Canadian Hacky Sack team.


"Victorino, why do you have double ear flaps [on your batting helmet]?  Look at the double ear flaps.  I hope you get hit in the ear!"


No shit, that is the worst of what we heard at the game.  Quite a welcome change from the usual "Asshole! Asshole!"


At The Keg, Canada's version of Houston's, we sat at the bar eating chicken wings and watching sports highlights.  A commercial came on the air for some show we'll call "Canada's Next Top Junior Philanthropist."  Blue Eyes and I reflected that the majority of new reality shows stateside are generally some variation of "America's Next Top Skank."

Speaking of, young Torontonian girls are an interesting crew, more like something you'd find in the outer boroughs of New York City (read: bridge and tunnel).  They like to dress up with the hotsy-totsy outfits (miniskirts up to their ass, stilettos that could give one a nose-bleed), even if they're only hanging out at a mid-level restaurant or on the roof of Wayne Gretsky's sports bar.  While lounging with my sweetie on an oversized couch I watched these girls struggle with general insecurity, outfit creep and complete lack of party etiquette (their noses were buried in their smartphones almost immediately).  Never have I felt so glad to be 41.


My favorite random thing was in the gift shop of the Hockey Hall of Fame.  I thumbed through the rotating shelf of personalized key rings because I'm always looking for a souvenir for any one of the strange-named children in my family.  I came across the usual suspects: Michael, Brandon, Doug.  I also found Claude and Rene.  It's the demographic after all.


Our hotel, the Sheraton City Center  -- whose decor was weirdly reminiscent of a Disney World hotel circa 1976 -- was across the street from a glass structure that housed both a TD Canada bank and a Starbucks.  And by "housed both" I mean it looked like the branch manager could reach behind him and pull his own cappuccino.  Starbanks, on dit.


By far, my favorite Canadaeque quirk could've been a PSA for your tax dollars at work: clean up after the Pride Parade.  When New York does the Pride Parade there are half a million people on Sixth Avenue for an hour and then a bunch of shit littering the street for days.  When Toronto does the Pride Parade, there are 1.2 million people for half the day not an errant paper to be found afterwards, like something out of fucking Burning Man.  Here's how it happens: at the end of the parade a fleet of street Zambonis follow the last float down Yonge, and following them are people sweeping the sidewalk. And those sidewalk sweepers are RUTHLESS. If you are hanging with your peeps afterwords trying to work out where to grab a brew, do NOT get in the way of the street sweepers.  They will sweep the trash through your group.  Now, that's how I would run my city.


If you go, be sure to Bixi all over town.  I experienced a sense of exhilaration I haven't really felt since I was about 12.  Until I woke up the next morning, of course.

And beware: Toronto is a lovely place to be in the summer months.  But the sun doesn't go down until about 9:30/10:00, which can make for a brutally hot day under the right conditions.  Somebody turn off the sun!

PS: We found the Moose Bar.  It's called the Loose Moose, and it's as douchey as ever.  But I love it.

Top 10 Awesomest Things about Iowa City

10. Breakfast wings*.
9. Bats in the Octagonal Barn's belfrey during the wedding speeches.
8. Chorizo & egg tacos at the farmer's market.
7. Photos and stories of politicians visiting the Hamburg Inn during caucus time.
6. The fact that there are separate bars for "the writers" and "the poets".
5. The Hy-Vee on S. Gilbert.  You can seriously fit like 12 Key Foods in there!
4. How freaking hot it was -- ok, that was maybe not so awesome.
3. The very determined guy fiendishly mowing the Rosengreen's lawn during their wedding eve barbecue.
2. The girl who works at the bookstore with the Eustace Tilley tattoo on her bicep.

And the number one awesome thing about Iowa:

Blue Eyes walks in to get a fountain soda.  He jiggles his full drink a little when reaching for a cap, splashing some on his wrist.  A guy behind him in line -- a big, hulking guy who looks like he's either on, or trying out for Buckeye football -- reacts to this by saying "Oh no!  Here, let me get you some napkins!**"



*Really just wings for breakfast, but it gave me a great idea to open a wings only cafe with breakfast and dessert wings!

**Cut to two days later, when we arrive back in New York at LaGuardia.  I go to the ladies' room, and am greeted by pee all over the seat.  Point, counterpoint.

Stay tuned.

Uh, if you haven't figured it out after months of radio silence, we're on hiatus kids.  Sally needs to finish the damn book.

Be back soon.

Not for the Lactose Intolerant

In preparation for our apartment building’s annual Christmas party, I spent last evening rifling through my recipes hoping to find just the right thing to tempt my fellow denizens and win top prize for Best Sweets.  While I was grabbing a cookie recipe that won me the Blue Ribbon at an office holiday party of yore, I spotted an old box I had snagged from my grandmother's house a couple years ago.  Never one to leave well enough alone, I opened it up figuring I might find an unusual dish that I could offer up for the Best Savory category.

The tin box is cream with red lettering on front that reads Abbott’s, a dairy local to Philadelphia.  Consequently, the focus of the recipes is any product originating from a cow’s udder.  Between the state of the card stock and my grandmother’s adolescent scrawl on the back of some of the cards, I'm pegging the recipe tin to date to the late ‘30s or early ‘40s.  Put these predominant factors together – recipes of a certain age + extreme lacto – and you can only imagine what delights I found inside.

Now I like milk.  I like cheese immensely.  Ice cream: come on.  Buttermilk even has its place in my palette, and cottage cheese is a lovely source of protein.  But the recipes that the chefs de cuisine at Abbott were offering up during the early third of the 20^th century were so god-awfully disgusting, I felt the need to don an adult diaper as a precaution.

Intriguingly, the recipes are prefaced by a couple cards with quotes from various “authorities”, just in case you needed a little encouragement before heading down the dairy vortex.  Here's one, an endorsement of moo juice and argument for its contribution to the creation of a perfect race:

“The people who have made liberal use of milk as a food have, in contrast, attained greater size, greater longevity, and have been much more successful in rearing their young.  They have been much more aggressive than the non-milk using people, and have achieved much greater advancement in literature, science and art.”

Say, Dr. E.V. McCollum, is that right?  I don’t know if there’s empirical evidence to support this, but I’m guessing there are a number of math geniuses out there who were raised on Lactaid.  Just sayin’.

“The white race cannot survive without dairy products.”

How now, Herbert Hoover.  Just the white race?  Although I got a couple hits on Google, it's unlikely we’re going to find that one in Bartlett’s.  Still...

“Drink buttermilk and live to be 100 years old.  It's an old saying, carrying an important truth.  Drink lots of it, especially in the summer.”

Agenda-pushing much, U.S. Department of Agriculture?  Nothing says refreshing like buttermilk on a 100 degree day, especially back when ice came to your house via a delivery truck and there was no such thing as central air.  Imagine if Coors sold buttermilk instead of the horsepiss they call beer?  Picture the Silver Bullet as a rancid-tasting heavy cream beverage downed by cheerleaders and aspirational douchebags in one of their ubiquitous TV spots.  Ahhh...refreshing!

“A high place in the diet should be given to ice cream, iced puddings and frozen custards.  Their combination of sugar and fat gives them high nutritive value.”

Now, that's research I can get behind, Dr. Woods Hutchinson!

And now for the recipes themselves, there were far too many to catalog for one blog post, so I pulled some of the highlights.

Buttermilk stew:  doesn't that just say “home cooked meal” to you?  When I first read this I mis-read ‘invalid’ as ‘not valid’, which is much more apropos.

Chicken baked in milk.  Did anyone see last night’s episode of ‘The League’, when Ruxin creates a stink bomb from milk and raw chicken?  If you did, my issues with this recipe need no further explanation.  However, I did like this line: “A tough fowl is made tender and tasty if baked in milk.”  Well, this tough fowl is made tender and tasty if baked in bourbon.

Molded cheese salad:  Did you ever see one of those jokey books that catalog Fifties housewives and the Jello mold dishes they used to slaved over for holiday boozefests?  Take that conceit, blow it up 1,000 times and addict it to crack.  The mere mention of whipping the gelatine to the consistency of whipped cream is gross; folding cottage cheese and mayonnaise into that chiffon makes Buttermilk Stew sound like Filet Mignon.

And finally: A Surprise Salad.  Did your husband bring home the boss for dinner again without giving you the heads up?  Well, delight your guest with this cornucopia of whatever you can find in the liquor cabinet, such as olives, cornichons, maraschino cherries – hell, throw in some beer nuts while you’re at it.  Then cover with cottage cheese to obscure the ingredients.  As long as everyone’s so drunk they have trouble reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, no one will notice that they’re slowly being poisoned.  Serve on a bed of lettuce for an instant sheen of class.

Now I know where my grandmother got her wild idea for the déclassé Cream Cheese Balls she used to offer up during the holiday season (for the record, it’s cream cheese and horseradish rolled into balls, and dipped into chopped Lebanon bologna, a lunch meat popular in the Harrisburg to Philadelphia quarter).

As a self-professed dairy freak, the recipes in this box are a one-way ticket to veganism.

Insane Clown Makeup

Today I would like to talk about makeup.



If you're a fairly regular (or were a regular reader) of this blog, you'll know I don't usually feel the need to be all girly and direct conversation toward beauty products, like some girls' blogs do. I don't even wear that much makeup, actually, but that doesn't mean I don't like it. I like playing with it, I like leafing through InStyle Magazine's Best Products issue, I like wandering around Sephora and testing the merchandise. I may not make myself up every day like RuPaul, but I'm not exactly worshiping at the altar of Tilda Swinton either.



Here's what: I just got back from a two-day lunch hour fishing expedition for eyeliner. See, my current eyeliner is nearing the end of its life as an unwieldy nub that keeps getting lost in my makeup box. This is the eyeliner that I paid about $28 for at Henri Bendel's, $26 of which regularly migrates from my lash line and ends up a great smudge along the upper part of my lid. Laura Mercier has some nice products, but her eyeliner can kiss my ass.


Before I spent another monthly 401K contribution on a bunch of high end products that will wind up similarly annoying me, I did a little poking around on the interwebs to find some guidance in solving my predicament. I quickly realized my curse is not so much the vessel but a design flaw: Sally's got squinty eyes, which means my lash line naturally hits the top of my lids, unless I walk around with my eyes at half mast, which is a recipe for disaster for a variety of reasons. Thus, my lid architecture precludes me from using pencil liner.


 
Understandably, I started looking into liquid liner. Do you know how the higher end beauty companies gouge you on that shit? I couldn't find a solution for under $30, let alone $28. Under my new semi-self imposed austerity kick, I am done with shelling that much sausage for something I'm not convinced is that much of an improvement – I still look like I just rolled out of bed, no matter the time of day. So back to square one.



A little more Googling revealed that L'Oreal has a nice product for around $10, which still seemed like too much for liquid liner, especially when one is subjected to the dingy lighting and apathetic customer service of Duane Reade in place of the aesthetic pleasure of a Sephora or Saks counter. After snorting at my prospects at the L'Oreal kiosk, I detoured to the cosmetic stands to see what they had available. Almay, Neutrogena, Maybelline and Cover Girl were all about the same price point; Rimmel was a little less. I passed by a couple brand names I had never heard of (and very possibly had grammatical errors in the display signage), finally landing in front of Wet-N-Wild, where I found, and promptly purchased their $2.99 liquid eyeliner product.


It got me thinking: When did we girls adopt the philosophy that the more expensive, the better the product?

 
There's something to be said that Maybelline Great Lash mascara is the #1 seller in the US, even among celebu-styletards. I remember getting by just fine on Wet-N-Wild from junior high to senior year in high school, when I was a little more flush from babysitting money than I had been in the past and the relative caché of Clinique curried favor. It just got worse from there. Once I started working, Clinique took a back seat to Lancôme, which took a back seat to the hipper Stila, which got completely annihilated by every other micro-product rollout.



My most egregious example of trading up is the assload of Laura Mercier I bought right before my wedding, a brand I had convinced myself was the best of the best. Six months later, I realize I was wrong; there's really nothing in the Mercier bundle that I couldn't have purchased at the fucking Walgreens on Royal Street the morning of the wedding. Now I'm stuck with an eye shadow trio I don't like, a foundation primer I don't use, a lip pencil that scratches and an eyeliner that winds up everywhere except where it belongs. Thank God I had the foresight not to buy the eyebrow gel.



After I got back to the office I decided I need to find a new model for my beauty product purchasing habits. I guess it just comes down to what am I not willing to downgrade? Eyeliner, shadow: expendable. Mascara: worth plunking down more money for the funky wand in Chanel's Inimitable brand. Blush: I like the Clinique cream stick. Concealer: Benefit's the only one that really masks that stubborn dark circle under my left eye. Foundation: whatevs. Lipgloss: I can't deviate from the poison ivy kiss of death formula special to the Buxom line.

 
So there you have it. I'll be experimenting this weekend with my Wet-N-Wild, probably getting inky brown stains all over my hands and clothing. If it's too difficult to apply, or I start foaming from the eye socket because the product's chemical makeup is akin to whatever's floating around the Gowanus, then I'll throw it out. It's only $2.99, after all!



One last thing: I have this fantasy running in my head that Wet-N-Wild, which has been around forever, started losing market share once the Urban Decays of the world started elbowing their way in. The company's response was not to move from the price point they had ruled for ages, but to start a new line at a higher price point. Same makeup, different name…and that name was MAC. Suckas!


 
If only that were true.

Bobby Flay Cannot Aspic a Horse.

Blue Eyes & I went to Saratoga this weekend, where it proceeded to piss down rain the entire time. Fortunately, it was umbrella giveaway day (golf-size umbrellas, not those cocktail-quality jobs you buy on the street for $5). Double fortunately, the Hampton Inn ("the new hotel in town", as about 15 people informed us) gave us Club House reserve seating for FREE!

Bottom Line: win some, lose some. But there was an interesting incident in the Fourth Race.

We noticed Bobby Flay had a horse in the game, and it was a favorite. Naturally we both put money on it. 5 min before post, when the trumpeter started up and the horses marched by, I realized this horse had no chance of winning. First of all, both the jockey and the horse were dressed like school crossing guards -- all yellows and fluorescent orange. Secondly, it was wearing a blinders. Fine, if you have a horse that prefers to get a load of the grandstands or the people mowing the infield while it's running, but in the pouring rain? "That horse does not wear that hat in the pouring rain and win this race," quoth I.

I was right. It lost.

"Hey Bobby Flay," Blue Eyes and I imagined yelling, spotting Chef Flay waltzing around somewhere in midtown. "You and your crossing guard horse owe me $10 bucks!"

Then Blue Eyes wondered aloud if horse meat would suddenly make an appearance on the menu at Bar Americain. I proceed to roar with hysterical laughter.

Even better? The horses' names. It's Tea Time upset Triple Cream. And the cow ran away with the spoon.

Shit You Can Say to Babies While You're Skyping With Them

A helpful list of conversational topics.

1. Who's a big [girl/boy]?
2. Show me your teeth!
3. Where's [mommy/daddy/family pet]?
4. Patty cake, patty cake, etc.
5. Shake it! Shake it! Shake it! (encourages dancing and/or jazz hands)
6. Clap for [baby]! Yaaaaaay!
7. Oh, you're so busy, baby! Busy baby!
8. Where are [baby's] ears? (repeat with other facial parts)
9. Ahhhhhh BOO! Ahhhhhh BOO!
10. Say CHEEEEESE! (approach webcam with face while repeating - this generally gets a big laugh)
11. One, two, buckle my shoe. Three, four, etc. (present corresponding digits to the web camera while reciting)
12. Where's your [dolly/truck/favorite toy]? Show me your [etc.].
13. [For babies old enough to approach and stand at baby gates]
[Baby's] in jail!
[Baby's] allowed one phone call!
Where's [baby's] lawyer?
[Mommy/daddy] didn't read me my Miranda rights!
14. Do you want a cookie? Ask [mommy/daddy] to give you a cookie! (watch baby turn around in earnest at parent, start to melt down when said cookie does not materialize)
15. How big is [baby]? [She's/He's] sooooooo big!
16. Say bye-bye! Bye-bye, [baby]!

Above list applicable to babies 3 months to 1 year.

‘100 Questions’ About Why This Show Is Even On TV

There’s something rotten in the state of Thursday night television, and that stink has a name: “100 Questions” – a laugh track bolstered piece of dreck that NBC has shoehorned into the 8:30 time slot that used to belong to ‘Parks & Recreation’. Let’s all hope this is just some creative summer scheduling and nothing more sinister, such as NBC pulling a fast one and replacing ‘Parks & Rec ‘all together because it’s (a) smart, (b) quirky and (c) laugh out loud funny – the perfect storm for cancellation, natch.

Generally I don’t like to dis television, mainly because there’s so much bad out there I wouldn’t know where to start (e.g. have I said word one about how I believe ‘The Bachelor’ is an allegory for the destruction of modern society?). But in this case I feel as if I must take fingers to keyboard and weigh in on my dissatisfaction with this new show.

Thursday night NBC television is generally very good, but a little bit like a hostage situation: if ‘The Office’ and ‘30 Rock’ lure you in, ‘Parks & Rec’ keeps you watching. I’m relatively apathetic toward ‘Community’, although last month’s paintball episode went a long way toward changing my mind (well, that and Joel McHale’s abs, but I digress). Besides, I’m generally too tired from the work week to be bothered to push a couple buttons on the remote and see what else is on TV. The Thursday lineup is satisfactory and has been satisfactory for a couple years now.

So why mess with perfection and shove this new “comedy” down our gullets? Because that’s what NBC does. They couldn’t find a home for it on another night, like Tuesday at 10:30, when I’m otherwise occupied with more interesting fare such as ‘Memphis Beat’ on TNT [Speaking of TNT, this is a perfect segue to the whole ‘Southland’ fiasco. That show, NBC’s first foray back into 10:00 slot long-form drama post-‘ER’, was SO GOOD I WANTED TO PUNCH SOMEONE. And just like that, NBC removed it. What did they put in its place? ‘The Marriage Ref’ – ostensibly to fill the gaping void that ‘The Newlywed Game’ left behind when it went off the air 35 years ago. Meanwhile, TNT gladly took NBC’s sloppy seconds and aired the full 13 episodes and then ordered up seconds. Its ratings are solid and people are happy it found a home. Well done, you NBC jackhammers. Did we learn nothing at summer camp?]

Anyway, back to ‘100 Questions’. After having watched the first episode, my overriding reaction was that it felt a whole lot like ‘Friends’, but wasn’t. It was ‘Ghost of Friends’. It was as if ‘Friends’ was that legendary high school football hero/prom king kid and ‘100 Questions’ was its dorky younger sibling. As if someone took the sitcom ‘Friends’ and put it through a washing machine – an industrial washing machine – and now all that is left is a stretched out, faded remnant of a formerly cherished piece of clothing.

The show’s similarities with ‘Friends’ continue: the funky, sizable New York apartment no character in the cast could remotely afford unless the show were taking place during the Eisenhower era, the smart alecky Chandler character, the Phoebe, the Joey. Everyone’s in their early thirties, unsuccessful at work and clueless in love. Apart from for some forced elements of pathos, it could be the same show. But it’s not.

It sucks.

A big part of the problem is the writing. As a self-professed writer myself, I’ll be the first to defend my brethren, but for this case specifically, I have to back away and cast the first stone. ‘100 Questions’ smacks of corporate whitewashing: either the writers wrote a pilot they thought the suits would want to buy, or they took a more interesting pilot and blanched it into something that looks like something else. Either case, the writers sold out and now we’re paying the price.

To say nothing of the “jokes”. Let’s analogize it this way: on ’30 Rock’, a joke will be hiding somewhere, and just as you’re rounding the corner it’ll jump out and kick you in the nuts. On ‘100 Questions’, the joke is standing directly in front of you waving its arms like an air traffic controller. Like, you know how when you’re driving down 95 toward Florida you start seeing signs for South of the Border? The joke experience on this show is just like that. “Here it comes…here it comes…here it comes…wait for it…and there it is.”

I’m going to refrain from ripping into the actors* since I think they’re okay, but moreso, I feel kind of bad for them. I lived in LA – I know the drill. You bum around testing for show after show, thisclose to going to network a million times, then you finally land a gig, but the gig is as appetizing as warm tuna salad someone left behind in the cafeteria. Two days ago. Provided they’re really lucky, the show will get canceled and the actors can start the whole process again (see: Mark Feuerstein). But if there’s ever justification for developing substance abuse problems, this cast gets a pass.

So I summarize: this new show? It’s so dreadful; I would rather watch back-to-back episodes of ‘According to Jim’. The episodes of ‘Friends’ in constant syndication all over cable? Well that’s just rubbing salt in the wound. NBC: for the first time ever, would you please justifiably cancel this crap sandwich and rearrange the Thursday night schedule back to normal^**?

* Sophie Winkleman, the lead actress, has a name that sounds like a character in a Beverly Cleary book. Apparently she went to Royal Shakespeare and has a bunch more theatre under her belt, though you wouldn’t know it from this show. She’s also Lady Frederick Windsor, but that information is superfluous. Anyway, I just wanted to say Winkelman.

** [Update] According to Wiki: “May 2009 the network announced that the show would debut mid-season in March 2010 on Tuesday nights at 9:30 pm, after NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics was completed. However the show was later pushed back to debut on May 27, 2010, with the episode order reduced from thirteen to six.” [Ed: that’s not good. Maybe there’s hope after all.]

Daily Intel Quiz!

I love this feature on NYMag.com.  Of course, my liking or loving it has a lot to do with the person who’s the subject of the quiz.  This week it’s Hamish Linklater, late of ‘New Adventures of Old Christine’ (the best thing about the show, really) and currently in Shakespeare in the Park.  Again (I saw him last year).

Anyway, I thought a good way of burning up the next 25 minutes waiting for my vacation to start, I’d fill out the survey like I’m a someone, and more importantly, someone the reader actually gives a shit about.  Here we go!

Name:  Sally Blue Eyes (nee Tomato)

Age: 39 (for two more weeks)

Neighborhood: Brooklyn Heights

Occupation: researcher, blogger

Who's your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?

Lennie Briscoe, and by extension Jerry Orbach. I read somewhere that when he and Jesse L. Martin used to stand around the set between takes they - both veterans of the theatre - would sing showtunes together.  If I had ever had the fortune to witness that, I would've turned into a puddle of goo.

What's the best meal you've eaten in New York?

The brasciole at Frankie’s Spuntino.  Always the brasciole.  Every. Time.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?

Try to make sense of raw numbers.

Would you live here on a $35,000 salary?

I did, back in the early ‘90s – and it didn’t end well.

What’s the last thing you saw on Broadway?

A View from the Bridge.  This is a good time to give a little shout out to Liev Schreiber – hope he wins this weekend!

Do you give money to panhandlers?

It depends.

What's your drink?

Dirty Martini or Brooklyn Lager, depending where I am.

How often do you prepare your own meals?

A lot!  Can I just say that I’m in love with my new All Clad 3 ½ qt. pot from Cook’s Companion?  Thanks, Martini Tracey!

What’s your favorite medication?

Dirty Martini.

What's hanging above your sofa?

Two views of UVA, which will find a permanent home in Blue Eyes’ parents’ basement one of these days.

How much is too much to spend on a haircut?

Forget haircut.  It’s the single process and highlight deal that will kill you.  Also, the $70 I just spent two months ago was too much.

When’s bedtime?

After Chelsea Lately.

Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square?

Old.

What do you think of Donald Trump?

I try not to.

What do you hate most about living in New York?

Sometimes I get really fed up with someone ALWAYS being in front of you.  In line, on the street, anywhere really.  From time to time, I’m a person who needs to be where others are not, and NYC is a hard city to make that happen.

Who is your mortal enemy?

The MIT guys who play quiz at Last Exit.

When’s the last time you drove a car?

At my mom’s?  A couple months ago, maybe?

How has the Wall Street crash affected you?

My 401K was illin’ for a little bit, but otherwise, no great changes.

Times, Post , or Daily News?

*snort* Please.  The New York Times or nothing.

Where do you go to be alone?

Walkabout.

What makes someone a New Yorker?

That little heart skip you get when you come back to the city, no matter how long you’ve been gone.