June 2004

After the excitement of reading the Kessler piece last night, I prepared myself for a day of constant recognition and autograph signing.”Hey!” I imagined imaginary clusters of people yelling at me, “Aren’t you that giant nose from the AJC?! Will you make cupcakes out of MY breasts?”Instead, I arrived at my bar review class this…

Our Swan Pastry Contest winner–Anthony of Spiceblog–may have been our only entrant, but one can’t help but laugh and admire his work:If Tchaikovsky and Wolfgang Puck had a love child this would be it!So congratulations Anthony on a job well done. You’ve proven that no matter WHAT your body type, good legs will always win…

It’s finally here folks, a profile several months in the making. I owe John Kessler a great deal of gratitude for such a generous piece. I owe the photographer a buttered-knuckle sandwich for such a horrible picture:I look like a nose with glasses or, worse, Dobby from the Harry Potter movies.Anyway, apparently the AJC site…

Screw religion, I’ve got reality TV to teach me values. “Survivor” teaches me that only I matter and that toilet paper is a luxury many can’t afford. I’ve taken to palm fronds, now. “The Real World” teaches me that every house should have an Asian, an African-American and a homosexual. I have several, now, bound…

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, all because they played video games. I know because I was one of them: my mind was nurtured not on Luigi Pirandello but Luigi as in Mario and Luigi as in Super Mario Brothers 1, 2 and 3. Also, Legend of…

For your enjoyment–(and by enjoyment I mean realization that you made a good choice not going to law school)–I will occassionally share food-related questions that pop up on my bar review. This one came last week at the PMBR and was the 35th question in the contracts section. I’m curious to see how non-legal-minds would…

My friend J.C. and I did improv comedy in college. Rathskellar, our troupe, is the oldest college troupe in the country. I met most of my friends doing it. Josh and Katy were in it. Lauren was in it. Lolita was in it.Since college, though, things have changed. I, for one, went to law school.…

I really enjoyed this sneak peek of Anthony Bourdain’s profile of Ferran Adria. For those not in the know, Ferran is the chef and founder of El Bulli in Spain—perhaps the most important food innovator in the world today. For those who read The New York Times Magazine Section he was on the cover a…

Got a trackback this morning from The Gothamist which linked my moderate defense of Amanda Hesser since today was Hesser’s last review as the NYT’s interim critic The review in question is of Masa and already Hesser’s bold gesture–four question marks in lieu of stars (which she invites the incoming restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, to…

Didactic is one of those words that, when people use it, they sound incredibly smart and you feel stupid because even though you’ve looked it up in the dictionary a thousand times you still don’t really know what it means. What does it mean? Let’s look it up now. Didactic: “meant or meaning to instruct.”I…