Monthly Archives: November 2014

Happy holiday guys.

[Photo Credit: J. Kenji Lopez-Alt]

And I hope you are too–no matter where you are. Happy holiday, you guys. Eat well, be nice, give hugs, and laugh.

Hey, here we are with another challenge from Where & When!  Yesterday was pretty easy, so I promised to give an interesting (read: toughie) locale that is also relative to certain recent events.  As far as things go, this mention was well earned:

I really like this one; plenty of intriguing details. I don’t have to provide any clues on this one, but not because I find it particularly easy (it will fool a lot of you for a while), but because the picture basically tells on itself the way I like. What I’d particularly like for you to do is figure out the name of a couple of these buildings, the general address and locale and a good idea when this picture was taken.  The first person with the exact answers, or the closest to the right answers will win the jug of cold root beer today.  As usual, all participants will get a chalice of cold cream soda for their efforts.  And I’m giving out a tray of brownies to the person who figures out why I chose this picture today.  (and if you do, I’ll be happy to explain myself).

You know the rules… yunnow, I have to just type them up and set them up as a reference page somewhere so I don’t have to repeat myself each time… well, have fun with this one (which I know you will) and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.  Take care all, and… well, you know the deal.

Photo Credit: Shorpy

“Untitled, from Chromes” by William Eggleston (1969-74)

Sure shot. 

Here we go again with another round of Where & When! I’m just going to jump right in with this one, because it’s fairly easy and I spent hours trying to find something like it, so I want to go to bed now…

Some might look at this right away and know exactly what it is, some might just blink twice and wait for the experts to chime in.  But it’s a nice photo regardless, and that’s always a big part of why the game exists, no? So you know the drill by now; tell us where and when this photo was taken (show your math of course), and feel free to kick in any ancillary information about this photo or location; i.e. history, current conditions, future events and/or any interesting trivia associated.  Cold root beer for the first person to get the correct answers, and cream sodas for all participants.

I’m going to bed (Sunday night as I write), see you all later!

Photo Credit: Shorpy

The Red Sox reboot.

Zel, we hardly knew ye. But we’ll always remember that smile.

R.I.P. Mike Nichols. 

[Photo Via: Bobbie O’Steen]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was released on this day in 1975.

In December of ’75, Brad Darrach filed this story for People:

“A star on a movie set is like a bomb,” Nicholson muses late one night in a Manhattan bistro. He is there for an after-theater snack with Anjelica Huston, 24, director John Huston’s actress-daughter, and Jack’s closest companion for more than two years. Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and David Geffen are sitting at the same table. “That bomb,” Nicholson goes on, “has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear. Because if a living reality doesn’t exist between the players in a scene, the scene won’t play. For instance, I never think of the actors I’m playing with as actors. I think of them as the people they’re pretending to be. That way, if an actor makes a mistake, I don’t feel it as a mistake. I see it as a quirk in that person’s behavior, and I react to that quirk.”

“What bothers me about my acting? Well, I don’t like my smile and sometimes I get into too much physical business. But the biggest difficulty right now is that I’m in too many pictures. People complain that they see too much Nicholson. So in Cuckoo’s Nest I’ve developed a new technique. I pull my hat over my eyes, turn my back to the camera—and disappear within the very movie I am making!”

What does this photograph by Victor Keppler have to do with SCTV? They both make me smile is all.

Dig this gem from Brad Darrach, People magazine, 1974:

“I thoroughly disapprove of gambling,” actor Walter Matthau explains primly as he whooshes toward Hollywood Park racetrack in his bronze Mercedes at 80 mph. “But I’m too rich and it’s good for me to lose.” He chuckles wickedly, rolling his eyes like dice. “Actually, I wallow in the pain of it all. It’s like an expensive psychoanalysis.”

“Big Walts,” as he is known, is Hollywood’s most flamboyant loser—one way or another he drops about $75,000 a year. “He will bet on anything,” says a Walter-watcher. “Sunspot cycles, mouse races, toenail-growing contests.” But the nags get most of his action, and on rough days L.A. horse-players see some Oscar-worthy Matthau performances.

“There he is!” the gateman cheers when Matthau arrives, and the actor does a little ramble through the turnstile. Once upstairs at the Turf Club dining level, Matthau airily dopes the daily double, then goes off to plunge $200 on Perla in the first race (“a shoo-in”) and War Souvenir in the second. A waitress arrives at the table Matthau is sharing with the track physician, Robert Kerlan. Matthau inquires about the chow mein. “Any roaches in it, Velma? Don’t like roaches. Too many calories.”

Cee’s Flair wins the first race. Matthau groans and claws his dewlaps. “Jerk! Why do you come here?” he asks himself. “Wasn’t one coronary enough?” (Matthau is referring to his 1966 heart attack.) Lunch arrives. Matthau stares at it. “I don’t know what it is, but I’d rather eat it than step in it.” Leaning close to a table mate, he mutters earnestly, “Do you think [film critic] Pauline Kael has put a curse on me?” After he bets War Souvenir again, Swordville wins a 30-to-1 shot. As the horses parade before the third race, Matthau whips out his field glasses. “Look for one with a bowed neck!” he whispers fiercely. “A horse with a bowed neck is a horse with confidence!” Dropping his glasses, he leers. “Though what I really like is a horse with a shapely ass.”

You’re welcome.

The Big Bopper goes…

Cha-Ching.

And a little something something for Monsieur Martin aussi. 

[Photo Credit: Scott Cunningham]

Larry Rohter in the Times:

Brian Jones is to the Rolling Stones what Leon Trotsky was to the Russian Revolution: organizer, ideologist and victim of a power struggle. Jones founded the group, gave it its name and recruited the schoolboys Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who then marginalized him, eventually expelling him from the band. Since his death in 1969, a month after he was forced out, Jones has largely been airbrushed from the group’s history.

Paul Trynka’s biography “Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones” challenges the standard version of events, focused on Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards, in favor of something far more nuanced. Though Mr. Trynka sometimes overstates Jones’s long-term cultural impact, his is revisionist history of the best kind — scrupulously researched and cogently argued — and should be unfailingly interesting to any Stones fan.

Specifically, “Brian Jones” seems designed as a corrective to “Life,” Keith Richards’s 2010 memoir. Mr. Trynka, the author of biographies of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and a former editor of the British music magazines Mojo and Guitar, has interviewed Mr. Richards several times over the years and obviously likes him, but also considers his memory of events highly unreliable.

[Photo Via: The Groovy Guru]

Here’s a beautiful little essay by the great Jhumpa Lahiri.

From Food & Wine (April, 2000):

I am the daughter of former pirates, of a kind. Our loot included gold, silver, even a few precious gems. Mainly though, it was food, so much that throughout my childhood I was convinced my parents were running the modern equivalent of the ancient spice trade. They didn’t exactly plunder this food; they bought it in the bazaars of Calcutta, where my mother was born and to which we returned as a family every couple of years. The destination was Rhode Island, where we lived, and where, back in the Seventies, Indian groceries were next to impossible to come by.

Our treasure chest, something we called the Food Suitcase, was an elegant relic from the Fifties with white stitching and brass latches that fastened shut with satisfying clicks. The inside was lined in peach-colored satin, had shirred lingerie pockets on three sides and was large enough to house a wardrobe for a long journey. Leave it to my parents to convert a vintage portmanteau into a portable pantry. They bought it one Saturday morning at a yard sale in the neighborhood, and I think it’s safe to say that it had never been to India before.

[Photo Via: Cooking Weekends]

Hey there, got time for another game of Where & When? Well so do I; I was so busy with early and long calls last week that I couldn’t get a post in edge-wise. But the holidays are approaching and the weather is starting to get a bit frightful (or annoyingly inconsistent if you’re in the east like me), so why don’t we take advantage of this little smattering of downtime and press our luck on this:

Another easy one, so I won’t offer any clues.  What I would like you to do is figure out the location of this photo and when it was likely taken, plus give us at least five modern landmarks that obviously don’t appear in this picture when it was taken (they could also be in the general vicinity if not exactly within the range of the photo).  As a bonus question, name one landmark that was fairly recently replaced by another, in or within range of the picture (tough one for you non-Noo Yawkuz out there!) Here’s a hint for that: “whatever it is I think I see…”

So have at it, people.  In respect to the weather, I think I’ll substitute a bowl of chicken noodle soup for the first person to get all the answers I seek, and a bottle of cold root beer for the bonus.  Everyone else gets a fortune cookie… don’t ask me why, I’m just playing it by ear today because of the weather.

Have fun, show your math and complete answers for credit.  Don’t peek at the photo credit and I’ll chat with you later!

Photo credit: NYC Past

Is it Monday already?

Cold one here in New York.

[Picture by John Held Jr]

Coolin’ with Jorge Ben.

[Photo Credit: Paul-Louis Roubert via MPD]

From Douglas Martin in the Times:

On Saturday mornings, Tom’s restaurant in Brooklyn is so popular that people line up outside just to be served old-fashioned diner cuisine like chocolate egg creams and all manner of pancakes. It’s been that way for years, and until the owner, Gus Vlahavas, died this month at 76, the patrons’ patience was rewarded with the free coffee, cookies, sausage bits and orange slices he handed out while they waited.

Mr. Vlahavas started working at Tom’s, which opened as an ice-cream parlor under a different name in 1936, when he was 9 years old. He stayed for more than 60 years, lovingly molding it into a homey Brooklyn family institution before retiring in 2009.

He died of respiratory complications on Nov. 4 at Columbia University Medical Center in Manhattan, his daughter, Beth Vlahavas, said.

Changelessness was the stock in trade at Tom’s, right down to the décor, including a half-dozen American flags and bright plastic flowers on the tables. It has had only one address since it was opened by Mr. Vlahavas’s paternal grandfather: 782 Washington Avenue.

[Photo Via: City.se]