You say it's your ...

Birthday parties in The City take many forms. There are Upper West Side dinner parties, evenings in Soho that move from chic Thai to cocktails and conversations, Ladies who Fondue, and nights at the bar.

And then there are gatherings at gourmet vegetarian restaurants in Koreatown (really more a strip than a town, but that's not important). I'd had a /day/, so East Coast Guy suggested martinis at The Algonquin to start. I don't mind paying exorbitant prices for them when they're that good, and that necessary. And yes, we saw The Cat.

And then we moved on to join Friends of EC Guy for a delightful evening at HanGawi. We began with two bowls of nongju, one flavoured with ginseng, which the birthday boy swore was highly potent, but didn't affect me at all. (Of course, the martinis were there first). Next, we ordered pumpkin porridge, and a dish of the most beautiful bean curd with kimchi and vegetables. It was divine, and the atmosphere was warm and peaceful.

The wandering around afterwards seeking dessert was not - it was one of the first warm nights of spring, and the streets were packed. We wandered down to Madison Square Park en masse, after a quick trip to a Japanese bakery, and then bid our friends adieu, and continued our walk down to the East Village. It was a gorgeous night.

Shuesday: Summer lovin'

Perfect for summer - tall, cool and bare.

Have I mentioned it's 50 and raining? Blek.

Very

This is definitely FG-worthy.

The closer we get to the May 30th release of the “Sex and the City” movie, the more these promo pics keep popping up. They are presumably meant to spark our interest in what promises to be two hours of relentless shopping, dating and complaining. But we’re much more interested in the behind the scenes goss because this picture suggests it was no slumber party happy times on that set.

This forced group hug is:

• Very very uncomfortable. They look so disconnected and like they hate each other as much as the tabloids suggest. Would anyone be surprised if this picture turned out to be four separate images photoshopped together?
• Very ladies who lunch…on the blood of virgins and sacrificed lambs. They all have crazy eye!

Of course, we're still seeing the movie. We're just saying.

Got milk?

More reasons to love living in the city ...

Manhattan Milk was created in 2007 with the express mission of returning quality, friendly, and convenient, old-fashioned dairy delivery to the world's busiest citizens. Now Manhattanites can enjoy the same 100% organic, farm-raised dairy products at farmer's markets and specialty stores without ever leaving their homes.

Although this is definitely the time of year Manhattanites want to leave their homes. If only there was a hope in an icy cold milk hell that this weather would continue through August. Because it is so beautiful here right now ...

Text messages saved in my phone

Fierce was in the store! Same hair and very glam.

I'm out buying hair product. I'll have a look when I return.*

ohmygod on my flight home to ny? Ian Mckellen.

Keeping the right side free.

House elves.

is gambatte some sort of non-starchy carb? is it like Kavli?

almost home - are you pajamas or pakoras?

me call u - me also bring articles and prepositions.

I'm so tired I'm already tomorrow.

nrrenhnh?


Inspired by TK.

*from someone who's never, ever used hair product.

Shuesday: Shaumless

I just know summer will be here any minute. Not that I'm anxious for the suffocating humidity, but I'm looking forward to wearing skirts 7 days a week, especially as I re-organized my closet over the weekend ...

FOOTGEAR OF THE GODS

The sandal maker Barbara Shaum prefers to focus on her craft, not changing trends. ("So gladiator sandals are popular again?" she asked recently, only moderately curious.) Since opening her business in 1954, her technique has stayed pretty much the same. Customers still choose from about 30 classic styles and an assortment of skins; their feet are measured, patterns are drawn; a couple weeks later, there's a fitting.

The age-old craft was taught to her by Menalkas Duncan, who learned it while visiting Greece with his aunt, Isadora. "I'm not really fashion-fashion," Ms. Shaum, 79, said as an employee fielded a call from a Vogue editor. "I'm more traditional."

Her sandals take four weeks to make (order now and have them by Memorial Day) and cost from $300 to $600 — a good deal, given their shelf life. "A woman came in here the other day who had her sandals for 30 years!" Ms. Shaum said, herself looking a little surprised.

Barbara Shaum, 60 East 4th Street; (212) 254-4250. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 1 to 6 p.m.

NYT Pulse

Oh the Places You'll Go: Phoenix II

The Clarendon was delightful. I'm a huge fan of great deals at boutique-style hotels - I spend enough time in chain hotels that when a place with personality has better prices, I'm there. As I was checking in, there was a woman freaking out on their front door - I gather her travel agent hadn't appropriately prepared her for the quirky nature of the place. I liked it. The wireless worked, the staff were friendly, it was perfectly clean, and instead of ignoring the history of the place, they celebrated it with photos and a bust of murdered journalist Don Bolles. I arrived in plenty of time to unpack (for some reason, I brought every piece of navy clothing I own) and get a little work done before my first meeting.

On the second day, I worked in the am, then drove two hours north to Prescott (rhymes with biscuit, not backlot). Drivers in AZ are a little slow, but the countryside was beautiful - cactus-spotted hills gave way to a plateau in bloom - yellow and green due to recent (and infrequent) rains. I was fortunate to visit a beautiful home with an unobstructed view of the sunrise from solstice to solstice, and 360 views of the buttes and valleys surrounding. It was a lovely afternoon and evening.



Saturday I drove to Tucson in the morning, and it was a trip to road runner country. I'm not kidding, I hit a tumbleweed with the Impala (no worries, they just explode). Sunday was a day of rest, and I spent it poolside, drinking margaritas, rotating in the sun, and celebrating Pride weekend with lovely Phoenicians who were having a fantastic time. The fountains danced, the 80's music blared, and the sun made its way across the pool deck. It was a beautiful day. Monday was a frantic series of meetings in Tempe, followed by a meal not worth blogging at Fez, and Tuesday I went home.

Do the math

We adore Ms. Klein, of Straight Up & Dirty, and the forthcoming Moose, especially when she shares dictates for dating:

how young can I go without being considered a pervie?

Half your age plus seven. How do people not know about this rule? Men can date women half their age, plus seven, and it's all good. So a 33 yr old bartender cannot under any circumstances date a 21 year old. Even if she doesn't giggle. No.

What I want to know is, where was she in December, when I needed this formula? Although perhaps it doesn't apply to women? Hmmmmm ...

Where you'll find me*

WendyB does this occasionally, and I thought I'd see what's out there. A shortlist of how people found their way to the site this week.

thick fashion
lamb sailor boudoir pants
Things that say Fabulous 45
boudoir style
inflataboob - let's be clear that I wasn't referring to an actual product at the time.
steel heels girl
staremaster tight

Also, pictures of 1920's fashion, Cookie Monster, Emily Proctor and Colin Firth.

*yes, I finally saw the Judy Garland bio-pic with the fabulous Judy Davis.

Shuesday: The other Monica

It's not often that Shuesday and The New Yorker collide, but I couldn't resist:

Boots tend not to be twenty-eight inches high. Twenty-eight-inch-high things are more like: your daughter who’s nearly two, an M.T.A. subway turnstile, the bathroom sink, or a suitable-for-show female Great Dane. The measurement is also the daunting height of the most common size—38—sold in Christian Louboutin’s suède pull-on Monica boot, which has a 120-mm. covered heel, no zipper, and extends past mid-thigh.

In shoe departments across the city, the trying on of this boot (cost: $1,790) has inspired F.A.Q.s (“How do those work?”) and varied protocols. There are folders, pushers, rollers, and scrunchers. There are ladies who know that you need to show up at the store wearing something with leg access (“Tights are best—they give you a certain level of slip,” one saleswoman said) and ladies who ask to take the boots with them into the boutique rest room, or who are favored enough clients to get a pair sent home with them to squish into in private. If you’re wearing pants, forget it. “You want a little bit of scrunching,” Shawna Rose, Louboutin’s director of communications, advised recently.“I would just say, even distribution.”

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Michael Nitis, the manager of the Louboutin boutique on Horatio Street, said one afternoon. “It’s going to take a good five minutes to put them on, and a lot of wiggling around.” Simon Doonan, the creative director of Barneys, observed, “Louboutin girls are very determined. You get the sense if they had an X-Acto knife and some margarine they’d do whatever they could to get that boot on.”

This Boot is Work

Oh the Places You'll Go: Phoenix

Of course, you have to get there first.

Yes, I was booked on American. The good news is that they took care of me, by changing my AA LGA-DFW-PHX trip at a reasonable hour to a United JFK-SFO-PHX trip leaving at 6 am. A 6 am flight means the car arrives at 4 am. Blek. And I hate flying backwards. Of course, the night before was an ANTM catch-up dinner party, and I wasn't packed. Ninety minutes of sleep does not make finding the fabulous very easy, at any hour.

When I arrived at JFK, mercifully in 35 minutes, and got to the check-in counter there was a long line. There were two flights departing at 6 am, and no one to check us in until 4:50 am, on a day when another major carrier had pulled 900 flights. When I got to the counter, it was discovered that while AA had made me a reservation, they hadn't issued me a ticket number, and we were in danger of missing the 30 minute mark, endangering my luggage. I got on the phone with AA and was able to straighten that out in time, but then, because of the nature of my ticket, I was pulled aside at the security checkpoint for additional screening. It was the first time ever, so it was about time, but to do it within 25 minutes of my flight's departure seemed a little much. It also meant boarding the plane without coffee, food or water. Grrr.

I did manage to sleep most of the way to SFO, where I finally got breakfast and water, and then flew back to PHX, in the window seat of the very last row of the airplane. I extricated myself from the long metal tube, suffered the overly cheerful shuttle bus driver, claimed my Impala, and headed off through the desert to The Clarendon, in the hopes of an hour poolside before my first meeting.

Shuesday: Primary colours

I know, I know, there's a theory behind all this, but are you going to argue with Miuccia? Let there be purple and orange for spring.

Icons we mourn: Dith Pran

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died on Sunday at a hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation. His credo: Make no move unless there was a 50-50 chance of not being killed.

He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists.

Mr. Schanberg wrote about Mr. Dith in newspaper articles and in The New York Times Magazine, in a 1980 cover article titled “The Death and Life of Dith Pran.” (A book by the same title appeared in 1985.) The story became the basis of the movie “The Killing Fields.”

NYT

Apologies for the time lag. And no, Charlton Heston doesn't get an Icons post. In case you were holding your breath, or were worried I was trapped under something heavy.

Must haves: Fork this

This would look great ... if there was anywhere in my kitchen to hang it ...

So cool.

No comments

My dear fellow foodie TK moved her blog over to something called Tumblr, which is fantastic, because it means she's blogging again. (And I mean regularly, not twice in a week after 9 months off and then nuthin'. Talk about marooned ...).

The bad news is there's no way to comment. And if you read TK, or know me, you'd know there's a need for comments. She tests recipes for Cook's Illustrated! She has witty insights on NYT articles! She craves food from the restaurant across the street from my apartment! (And yet somehow doesn't manage to visit. Hmmm...). Why didn't she didn't tell me about SWPL sooner? (Which is just the most hilarious thing ever, btw. Among other things, dinner parties, not having a TV, The Wire, soccer, Oscar parties, outdoor performance wear, Obama, etc. It's frightening. Run, don't walk.) I can't resist sharing this one in particular:

Often times, white people get frustrated with the state of their country. They do not like the President, or Congress, or the health care system, or the illegal status of Marijuana. Whenever they are presented with a situation that seems unreasonable to them, their first instinct is to threaten to move to Canada.

For example, if you are watching TV with white people and there is a piece on the news about that they do not agree with, they are likely to declare “ok, that’s it, I’m moving to Canada.”

Though they will never actually move to Canada, the act of declaring that they are willing to undertake the journey is very symbolic in white culture. It shows that their dedication to their lifestyle and beliefs are so strong, that they would consider packing up their entire lives and moving to a country that is only slightly different to the one they live in now.

Within white culture, it is agreed upon that if Canada had better weather it would be a perfect place.

Being aware that this information can be used quite easily to gain the trust of white people. Whenever they say, “I’m moving to Canada,” you must immediately respond with “I have relatives in Canada.”

Note: Canadian white people threaten to move to Europe.

Note: Europeans are unable to threaten to move anywhere.

Clearly, I feel the need to comment.

And furthermore: SJYAL

Shuesday: It's in the mail

Yes, I still pay my bills the old fashioned way, with handwritten cheques and stamps and all that jazz.

One of the curiosities of moving is the inherited mail. (I wonder what the person who lives in my old apartment still gets for me, if anything. I think I was better about junk mail then.) Regardless, the androgynously named person who lived here before was apparently a Bergdorf's Blonde, because I received both the W Magazine sized spring catalogue and the special shoe report. Little do they know - they've given me Shuesday for weeks!

Although, oddly enough, the shoes in the catalog do not appear to be available online. At least, not at Bergdorf's. How bizarre. Still, I was able to find these, by Mr. Louboutin, elsewhere.