Shuesday: Every rose has its thorn

But you'd wear these anyway.

Roger Vivier

Gotham

The restaurant, not the city. The Pastry Chef works here, and she pulled strings when Midwest Medved and I stopped in on Monday night. Mmmmmmm (exceptions noted).

GRILLED OCTOPUS
fingerling potatoes, grilled leeks and caper berries, aged red wine vinaigrette

HEIRLOOM TOMATO SALAD
red radish, watermelon, black plum and queso fresco lime juice and extra virgin olive oil

ALASKAN SPOT PRAWN RISOTTO*
chorizo, slow roasted tomatoes, arugula and spring garlic

GOTHAM MARKET PASTA
truffles and wild mushrooms

GRILLED NEW YORK STEAK
marrow mustard custard and vidalia onion rings bordelaise sauce

S'MORE
warm bittersweet chocolate tart, marshmallows, buttered hickory nut ice cream

FROZEN NUTELLA*
olive oil ice cream, hazelnut biscotti

ICE CREAMS AND SORBETS, and a cookie plate

2006 Ayers Pinot Noir "Pioneer", and an Iniskillin dessert wine.

*the risotto was really salty, beyond the chorizo, and I didn't adore the nutella dessert. The s'more was divine.

Icons we mourn: Paul Newman

Paul Newman. What can I say, except I haven't seen enough of his films, and will remedy that, and hope he'll understand. I think he will.

Requisite celebrity sightings 7

At Joe The Art of Coffee in the West Village, John Cameron Mitchell (aka Hedwig).

















And at Graffiti, Tom Cavanaugh, (who was more than gracious when I broke my own rule about leaving the famous alone, and spoke the word "Oilthigh").

Wednesday's Wordle: Variations on the Word Sleep

Another fave, by Margaret Atwood

Wordle

Shuesday: Fall pinking

What Miss Piggy will be wearing this fall.

I'm not saying I like booties (I don't), I'm just saying. I love the buttons!

Christian Louboutin

Sometimes it's hard

to be "elitist" ...

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

(...)

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence.

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet

Back to School ...

Geometry and History it's just a pain
Biology and Chemistry destroys my brain
don't they know that I deserve a better fate
I'm really much too young to matriculate

This fall, more than any in recent history, the dog days of August rushed into frenzied first weeks of September. And it's not just me and my new job.

East Coast Guy is teaching at Columbia, The Scot started med school, and moved, and Tabula Rasa came back East to school. The Pastry Chef is full time at Gotham, Perennial Student went from Brown to Ann Arbor, and The Vintner is working at City Winery, just in time for harvest. The Lead Singer is turning out coters for Obama in Tampa (and I am the Perfect Amount of Sad missing her), The Republican and his lovely wife are expecting, and the Actor is wearing spandex in an un-airconditioned warehouse in Shanghai (it's for the children!). Various friends are moving, or have moved, from NYC to Boston, Miami and Atlanta, from the outskirts of Toronto to Princeton. And I'm sure there's more.

Between work and what I'm calling the consolidation of my NY friend base, there's been an event on my calendar every night, and I've had two, two-brunch weekends in a row. This is the life. Now, if I'd just go to bed at a reasonable hour ...

Read this book

And not just because I play trivia with the author. It's good!

A CURE FOR NIGHT
By Justin Peacock
341 pages. Doubleday. $24.95.

After experimenting with heroin, Joel Deveraux loses his job at a prestigious, high-paying Manhattan law firm and washes up at the Brooklyn public defenders’ office, handling arraignments. Then his boss asks him to take the second seat on the defense of Lorenzo Tate, a black drug dealer accused of killing Seth Lipton, a white college student, and wounding Devin Wallace, another drug dealer, in a shooting. Lorenzo has been identified as the shooter but insists he is innocent. And Joel and Myra Goldstein, the tough lead defender on the case, are soon finding that the prosecution’s narrative is a little too simple to be believed. Myra, who teaches Joel about the law, and more, gives the book its title: “That’s what criminal law is: it’s how the day tries to correct the night’s mistakes,” she tells him one evening over drinks. “That’s why we’ll never run out of work. Not unless someone invents a cure for night.”

Amazon

Hello!

Somecards

Wednesday's Wordle: The Cinnamon Peeler

This is one of my favourite poems.

Shuesday: Pinstripes, baby

I'm a little closer to Wall Street in the New Place, and, well, I think these are sexy ...

Must haves: Iceorb

How do I not already have this?*

Oh Daily Candy, you're such a temptress.


*Not for the dip part though, that's just wrong.

Ooh! Pretty ....

Not that NYC needs another dessert bar, but how fun!

The chef’s special caramel apple ($14), on the other hand, is a masterpiece, three manifestations of caramel (in a milk chocolate mousse, as a brittle and as a sauce), matched by four stages of apple (frozen in a sorbet with basil, as a gelée, in a semifreddo and as a neat row of raw slices), all arrayed beneath a sugar dome as thin as a soap bubble.

It’s an impressive sight. The interplay of flavors is kaleidoscopic, all you imagine caramel and apples could be.

Greetings, Parents ...

Click here to see it - too funny!

Wednesday's Wordle: FG

How cool is that?

Wordle

Shuesday: Grapes, grapes

ooh ah!

Jimmy Choo

Hands across the net

When a small private plane carrying Stephanie Nielson, a young mother who lives in Mesa, Ariz., crashed in eastern Arizona three weeks ago, Katja Muggli, a graphic designer in Munich, said she felt as if there had been a tragedy in her own family — and in a virtual way, there had been.

Ms. Muggli, 34, has never met Ms. Nielson. But as a blogger and single mother, she was an avid follower of Ms. Nielson’s blog, the NieNie Dialogues. The site, a diary of home life that she started in 2005 for close friends and family, had attracted a small but ardent following, thanks to its upbeat dispatches about marriage, home décor, entertaining and the art of raising four children ages 6 and younger. To her admirers, she was Supermom.

“Stephanie always inspires me,” Ms. Muggli said in an e-mail message, adding, “she always pushes me to do more.”

That was then. Now, Ms. Nielson, 27, and her husband, Christian, 29, are in a Phoenix hospital burn unit. Mr. Nielson sustained burns over 30 percent of his body. Ms. Nielson has burns over 80 percent of hers. On Friday they were in critical condition.

Since the accident, bloggers have joined with Ms. Nielson’s siblings to organize more than 350 online auctions on their sites. As they sell bridesmaid dresses and baby shoes, the fund-raiser may surpass $100,000, family members said.

Please take a moment to read this article, and if you can, bid on WendyB's necklace. Her jewelry is amazing, and the cause is worthy.

You're a mean one

Mrs. Grinch?

I know, I know, it's just the colour choice. Although, given the palette she's been sporting, you'd think she supported LGBT rights.

Vanity Fair got /really/ catty ...

Let's do it

And in style!


Renee Frances

Shuesday: Grey skies ahead

What I want to know is where these were last year when I /needed/ them.

Although suede ... hmmmm.

Labour lite

I'm taking it a little easy this weekend. Running errands with The Pastry Chef on Saturday involved a trip to Tiffany's for jewelry cleaning and the best customer service experience I've had in months. Everyone there was lovely, warm, and sincere. Between dropping the piece off and picking it back up, we went to Macy's, which was a less than excellent experience. But we got the job done.

Sunday involved a lot of laying about, but by late afternoon I pulled myself together. I broke out my Anne Fontaine top, threw on a pair of mules and a short skirt, put up my hair, grabbed my latest bag, and headed to the Met to see the Superheroes exhibit before it closed, with East Coast Guy. It was a little disappointing, and we're going to have to go back for Koons and Turner as we ran out of time.

We took a cab to Midtown and met one of ECG's two BFFs and /his/ friend for a drink and a quick dinner for them - they'd been drumming at the NYC Brazilian Day Festival - at Cafe Un Deux Trois. So lovely to see the BF again. He ran off to catch the train back to Great Barrington, and we wandered uptown to see whether Nobu would take us early.

When arriving early for a restaurant reservation, one may enquire whether one's party might be seated early if one waited in the bar. Regardless of whether this is a realistic option, one expects the hostess to be honest and polite. Particularly at a /nice/ restaurant.

One does not expect the hostess to smile insincerely, respond in a way that is unhelpful, and then take a phone call in the middle of the conversation, without preamble, when there are two additional women at the podium. We turned on our collective heels and left to get a drink at The Modern. When we returned, closer to the appointed time, the hostess in question was absent, and we were well treated. We took a moment to comment, politely, to the manager, who apologized. We were then seated promptly, at a delightful table, and the rest of the evening exceeded expectations.

The Menu:

Cucumber Martini
Ketel One on the rocks, splash pineapple juice, splash grapefruit juice, splash soda
Yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno (delish)
Salmon tartare with caviar
Oshitashi
Fluke with miso
Grilled baby squid with olive oil shiso
Eggplant with miso (the best I've ever had)
Eel with avocado cut roll
Toro sashimi
King crab sashimi

It was a lovely evening.