food of my youth (i love these photos)

when i was in kindergarten, our class trip was to mcdonald's. we took turns jumping into the big meat freezer. and then we had hamburgers and fries for lunch. i don't think they were called happy meals back then, but it was one. the burgers cost only a little bit less than they do here:

photo: matias aguilar, from untitled series 2/2008. copyright, matias aguilar.

i love the blues in the photo, and the 70s look...

****************

i used eat vienna sausage...cold, right out of the can...

photo: matias aguilar, from untitled series 2/2008. copyright, matias aguilar.

love the light...
sad, solitary refuse...

see more of matias' work here...

happy, happy birthday

jojo!!!

zooey deschanel in jane mag, june 2007

zooey deschanel, in jane mag, june 2007

love/hugs...

style maven

the other day, i left for work (a little late) but pleased with myself as it took little to no agonizing to put together my work outfit:

black jersey uniqlo dress;
cropped turquoise lux cardigan that i first saw at an urban outfitters in vegas last year (apparently it would have been too easy to shop at one of the 6 urban outfitter stores here in the city);
black fishnet tights;
black knee-high socks;
and my favorite black boots.

i thought i looked ok.

as i started my trek to work, with a little smile on my face, spring sunshine kissing my cheeks, i looked down for a moment, to admire the gently worn quality of my favorite black boots, and i realized that my black socks were actually...navy blue.

whoops.

it's what i get for getting dressed with the lights off.

and it's the kind of thing that would simply never happen to my super-stylish friend, zovig.

fashion is her passion and her gift. she has an image consulting business, CALLA STYLE, which is focused on women who, after having lost a significant amount of weight, are looking to celebrate their new body and explore and embrace new, fun, flattering fashion options. when she first told me about calla style, i actually got goosebumps, and a little bit teary-eyed. i couldn't remember the last time i spoke with someone with real passion for their work...it's so clearly what she was meant to pursue.

read her blog, ask her any style question...i know she knows her stuff...

i've been in kind of a clothes/shopping funk for a while (mom would consider it a lifelong funk?). i've basically been wearing the same thing for the last 10 years (variations on a theme of jeans, black pants, black skirts...and lots of jcrew final sale items. ha! i'm really more of shoe gal, so i'm sorta lazy about clothes). but when i see zovig, and our mutual friend, the lovely ms. teresa, it's a daily fashion WOW. they're truly stylish. i love their confidence.

my "style," such as it is, is not likely to change drastically, but last weekend, i was bluesy about more than my wardrobe, and i had a feeling i'd benefit from an afternoon of shopping with zovig...

and i did! not just because we found some fun, flirty pieces (for a song), figured out what will "showcase" the "particulars" of my shape, and reviewed the wisdom and necessity of tailoring, but because i was genuinely happy--funk-free!--and excited afterwards. it was amazing to see her at work: she's authoritative, experimental, encouraging, honest...she allows you to relish the investment of time and thought into what will become your style, what will become you. and she inspires confidence...

she may make a real, "together" lady out of me yet.

so long as i remember to turn on the lights when i'm getting dressed...

this photo tells a story, but...

( photo via xinhua/reuters)

i love it precisely because you can't tell who won.

(happy to report it was nadal, in a 3-set, 3-hour and 3-minute, edge-of-your-seat thrilla, 6-7 (4), 7-6, 7-5...after having been down 2-5, in the third, no less.)

but at that moment, after shaking hands at the net, neither looked relieved, although i'm sure one was; neither looked happy, though i'm sure one was...they have similar expressions, but were surely at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

but the complexity of the match--or the complex "implications" of the match, that everyone, from reporters to bloggers to fans of either, neither, or both players, will reflect and speculate on--is captured in that moment. the photo is telling...

i actually can't believe i missed the match.

i can't even blame my job, because with this tourney being played in california, and this match scheduled for the afternoon, and my apartment being a 10-minute walk from my office (7 minutes, if i'm scurrying and catching "walk signs" the whole way), i could easily have made it home, popped some popcorn, made a root beer float, and lazed on the sofa and enjoyed at least the last 2 sets.

but alas. this--arguably one of the biggest, richest non-slam events for men and women--is being carried on fox sports network and they seem to know, or care, not one fat lick about tennis, as they've lined up a mere 4 hours of coverage per day (in 2-hour windows).

that just makes no sense.

perhaps next year i will just have to plan to attend the tournament in person. fans of the concrete elbow were treated to a behind the scenes, all grounds pass and it sounds like exactly the kind of long weekend i need... but honestly, after reading that post (and the one from today), i'm starting to wonder what i enjoy more...watching tennis, or reading about steve tignor, watching tennis.

is it crazy to derive so much pure joy from reading?

if so, then i am a goner...

fear of flying?

my cousin jojo once asked me if i would ever go skydiving.

i don’t remember my exact words, but the gist of the response was NOOOO WAAAY.

he seemed genuinely surprised by this, and perhaps disappointed, as he seemed sure i was the kind of person that would…at least try it.

my fear of flying (now controlled) and fear of heights (unlikely to be conquered) sort of make the whole skydiving bit unlikely. but the conversation stuck with me. i wondered, do i readily embrace new/interesting/daring/daunting opportunities? or do i say, mmmthanks, but no...

the actual answer (a little of both) is not that important or thrilling.

the point is, i challenged myself from that point on to be more of a YES girl.


in that spirit, when my friend nicole invited me to attend a “flying yoga” workshop, I agreed.

but from the moment I said SURE! and she started calling for reservations, i started having some of my own…a list of potential excuses started scrolling through my mind…i wouldn’t have backed out on her, really, but I’d been to some not so great yoga workshops in the past, so I wondered....

what is flying yoga?!
what would the studio be like? (dirty? dumpy? dusty? hot? overheated? damp? musty? stinky? cramped? empty?)
what would the people be like? (dirty? dumpy? dusty? hot? overheated? damp? musty? stinky? cramped? empty?)

and
would my occasionally lame back and i be able to make it to work the next day?

well…

the studio had clean, beautifully finished, dark wood floors and huge, shaded windows that filtered just enough sun to lend a happy sunday afternoon vibe. (whew!)

but it was eerily quiet.

a 30-second survey of the crowd, and it was apparent: of the 11 other people (5 couples and 1 adventurous soul who signed up solo), nicole and i were the only yoga partners that were not “a couple.”

i recognized one of the instructors--she used to teach the monday night yoga classes at our office. she’s petite and pale, with a mass of wavy brown hair that outweighs her frame. nice as she’s been when i’ve taken her classes before, she did not acknowledge or smile readily enough that afternoon to set me at ease. i started to worry.

her partner was a 6-foot tall, rangy fellow, who must have weighed all of 130 pounds. he was wearing a typical yogi uniform: a loose-fitting white tank, and baggy black drawstring pants. he sat with a very straight back, but had naturally concave shoulders, which made him look even slighter. he had huge, deep set and droopy brown eyes, and a long thin face. his shaved head accentuated the surprising, anvil shape of his skull. he looked altogether forlorn and in need of a hug.

and hug we did.

there was lots of group touching. it went something like this:

let’s sit in a circle, with our knees touching…close your eyes...ooooohm...

let's stand in a circle...hold hands..close your eyes...ooooohm...
let’s stand in a circle, with our shoulders touching...turn to your left, lock arms with the person in front of you, bend your knees so you’re sitting on the lap of the person in front of you…close your eyes…
let’s stand in a circle, wrap your arms around the waist of the person next to you, lean back as far as you can…close your eyes…
let’s stand in a circle, with our shoulders touching, turn to your left, massage the person in front of you, while you’re sitting on their lap….close your eyes…

(i very much like touching people that I know. i do not much like touching strangers. i started to get creeped out.)

then we broke out into pairs and stretched more.

and then, finally, our instructors began demonstrating some of the “moves” that we would attempt. this was the "flying" part we'd all been waiting for.

there was a lot of “interesting” positioning, and judging by the excited, longing exchanges between the other pairs, I half-wondered if this “flying yoga” or “acroyoga” workshop wasn’t code for “sex camp.” i am guessing that this session offered some new kind of foreplay for them. provided they didn’t hurt themselves.

i decided from that point, to not look at anyone else, lest i bear witness to some intimacy that i shouldn’t…i had enough to focus on for the next two hours: trying to not drop (or be dropped by) nicole.

and that was when things started to get fun!

we tried almost all the poses they demonstrated, taking turns being “the base” or “the flyer.” it was certainly challenging, as “the base,” to balance someone by positioning your feet on the small of their back, or on their hip bones, but it was also surprisingly difficult to be “the flyer,” as you have to focus on distributing your weight—engaging your core, but simultaneously relaxing your arms and/or legs. it takes a lot of repetition, and tweaking, to figure out what feels “right.”

i definitely enjoyed the physical challenge of it, and while the poses themselves didn’t feel particularly relaxing (perhaps with time?), i did enough laughing to feel exhilarated and energized—and surprise, surprise—excited about the prospect of doing it again…

i recommend going with someone you won’t mind touching and being occasionally off-balance with. and someone who enjoys falling down, laughing.

photographic evidence from last weekend:

nicole as the flyer, me as the base...

me as the flyer, nicole as the base...

more on acroyoga here.

in vino...at home

rainy friday night in nyc, round about 7, and i'm home alone, with a bottle of trapiche oak cask malbec 2005, a pile of magazines and printed articles to read...

i couldn't be happier.

(a note about the wine: the fella at my local wine store wholeheartedly encouraged this selection--it's his favorite of the range of malbecs he's tasted recently. i've had some good ones of late, but i'm surely no expert. he contends this is more structured than the ones i told him i've had (alamos 2006) and have waiting for me at home (finca la linda 2006), and that the oak aging makes all the difference...i already knew it wouldn't match the crazy smooth chilean malbec that my boss and her husband served at their holiday soiree...the name escapes me--i really need to learn how to have and hold my drink...but i'm certainly enjoying this. it's jammy, yes, fruity, yes, and ooooh the peppery finish. all, as advertised. )

i've been a little whirligig for the last six weeks!

a trip to paris, then slammed, slammed, slammed with work, one home improvement debacle after another (right now the accent wall in my bedroom is BLACK, which has to change...i will not bore you with the bubble-yum-pink-kitchen-disaster), and general hobnobbing ...

lots of fantastic art, good eating, and drinking = lots of things to write about, reflect on, but no actual writing. sigh...

on top of all of THAT, i found out that one of my favorite food writers, dara moskowitz grumdahl, will no longer be penning her column for the minneapolis/st. paul city pages. damn!!
so tonight, i will be catching up on her columns, including this--her last--and checking out the opening entries of her new blog, while i await her longer form work in the minnesota monthly...

i will also be catching up with the one and only concrete elbow...

the rest of the weekend will be devoted to reading magazines (back issues of new yorker, corby krummer in the atlantic, wired, dwell...and [for work] men's health, women's health, runner's world, best life), thinking about ways to advance my career (?!!), shopping for things that will make my now not-so-new apartment look warm and inviting, and make it capable of hosting friends for wine and cheese, or coffee and cinnamon rolls...

and i will do yoga.

and eat a luxurious brunch.

and meditate on my recent grand experiences.

and see if any of the one thousand photos that i took during those grand experiences are worth posting.

and, perhaps, write...

but surely, for tonight, i am staying home.
i will not go out into that rainy night.
i will enjoy this fine wine.
and my alone time.

game on

Photo: Bill Frakes/SI

big week for the politicos--and voters--with primaries coming up in SC (dems only) on the 26th, and FL on jan 29...

super tuesday's just round the bend, on feb 5, with 24 states (including my own) holding primaries or caucuses.

in that spirit, here's a brief, interesting piece from si, in which s.l. price recounts his one-on-one pick-up game with sen. barack obama in iowa last dec:

Here's the beauty of pickup basketball: You may be a U.S. senator, a living symbol of racial healing and perhaps even the next President of the United States, but if you're gliding in for an easy layup and each point is precious, I've got no choice then, do I? You're getting hacked. So, yes, I'm hammering that arm and crashing headlong into your whippet-thin frame; and, yes, it's a foul so flagrant, so absurdly desperate, that all you can do, body buckling, is laugh. Hey, it's pickup. Everyone, even you, uses whatever he's got to win.

"Believe me," Barack Obama says, walking to the top of the key, "you can get shot for doing that."

He's not serious. I think. But he wants me off his back, and invoking jumpy Secret Service men is a wise ploy. With the race for the Democratic presidential nomination whisker-close, Obama can't afford to show up for some Dubuque meet-and-greet with a mysterious fat lip. His wife, Michelle, warned me, "Don't break his nose, give him a black eye or knock his teeth out. Or I'll have to come find you."

Actually, Michelle understands. She hails from a Chicago family that believes the game -- when you pass, when you call fouls, how you check the ball -- reveals character. Once her romance with Barack got serious, she pressed her brother, Craig Robinson, to conduct the acid test: Go play. Robinson tried to duck it; he had starred at Princeton, and Barack had been a benchwarmer for his Hawaiian high school team. "All I could think was, This guy's going to be terrible, and I have to report that back," says Robinson, who's now the coach at Brown. "And you can't fudge it, because if he turns out to be a jerk and you knew but didn't say it, you're in trouble."

Obama was confident but not cocky, unselfish but unafraid to shoot. On court he showed the same balance that has fueled his political rise; he could talk trash without seeming mean, compete feverishly without seeming angry. Yet few knew how central the sport -- "my first love," he calls it -- was to his self-image as a mixed-race child: How the greatest gift from his absent dad was a basketball, how playing gave him his closest white friends and a place where black skin wasn't a disadvantage. When a coach, a close friend, casually threw out the word n-----, Obama says, "It reminded me that race is complicated, that people are complicated, that you could have ugly strains even among people who were otherwise decent.... It does not necessarily mean they're bad people..."

read the rest of it here...

more pics from the "game" at si.com photo gallery...

more of "the point after"--the back page column that replaces rick reilly's "life of reilly"-- here.

coverage to dream about

nadal (via peter bodo's blog post, the oxymoron: nadal v. connors, 1/17/07)...

these are boon times for tennis fans. not only has the quality of the tennis at the "happy slam" been spectacular (on the men's side alone, baghdatis d. safin; hewitt d. baghdatis; federer d. tipsarevic, tsonga d. gasquet), we've actually had an opportunity to see the matches LIVE.

espn/espn2's been offering three windows for live viewing--during the first week, there was morning, prime time and overnight coverage--plus "encores" of select match-ups in the afternoons.

the programming was smart to boot: in previous years, programmers seemed to forsake quality match-ups for "americans only" broadcasts (agassi, roddick, blake, the williams sisters) or alternately, the "sharapova show," with repeats of those same matches played ad nauseam--and i do mean nauseam--until the final rounds of the tourney.

this year espn finally lived up to the "worldwide" part of it's moniker. it seems the only programming blip so far was a decision to show the williams sisters' playing early round doubles, instead of showing nalbandian--considered a serious threat coming into the open--who was locked in more contentious singles match.

not that we have been--or should be--denied the opportunity to see roddick, blake, serena and venus williams, and maria sharapova, or federer or henin or nadal, for that matter, but with the expanded live coverage on espn (and more live and taped programming on tennis channel), viewers have been able to witness the depth and quality on both the men's and women's sides, from tour veterans and up and coming players from all over the world, which is a real treat for tennis fans, and which may actually help dedicate new ones.

and let's acknowledge the yeoman work of chris fowler and the team of commentators-- cliff drysdale (a favorite), mary carillo, mary joe fernandez, patrick mcenroe, darren cahill (love him, too), martina navratilova, justin gimelstob, bud collins, among others. "cliffy" and mary jo remarked that fowler had been on air for something on the order of 17 hours and 35 minutes. that's a lot of rallying, replays and in-studio banter to have to deal with. say what you will about the commentators' style and some of the things that escape their lips--which bloggers and their enthusiastic readers (like me) have lauded or criticized without reservation--but they've helped deliver some great tennis moments. we can't take their role in this for granted. as wise man/writer-editor-blogger extraordinaire, steve tignor reminds us, there were times when live coverage of the australian open didn't exist, except in our dreams...

if you don't get espn or tennis channel, or you just can't get enough-- even with the unprecedented tv coverage--check out steve tignor's "concrete elbow" blogs, which live on the tennis.com and espn sites, and peter bodo's tennis world blog. the "action" is just as lively! i will devote another whole post to tignor's stuff, as basically anything he writes becomes one of my personal must-reads. but i owe a particular debt to bodo for his intriguing analysis of nadal v. connors this week, and the unbelieveable photo of nadal (above).

dreamy, indeed.

good karma folks

come to the bowery mission benefit, at the bowery hotel, this thursday nite...sloppy weather in the forecast, but don't let that stop you...get sloppy with us!
all the vodka/other spirits you can drink, from 7pm-10pm...
silent auction for all you high rolling do-gooders...

good cheer, good karma, how can you resist?

it's $45 in advance/$55 at the door...fully tax-deductible....

more info on bowery mission benefit/tix and goodkarmanyc at
http://www.goodkarmanyc.org/

this will be my first time to the party, but i hear from my friend, the exceedingly lovely ms. teresa, one of the event co-chairs, that very, very good times were had by all last year...

hope to see you there...

new year's odyssey

Romare Bearden. "Odysseus Leaves Nausicaa." 1977.

two weeks into the new year, and i'm not making much progress on my resolutions.

#1) be better dressed for work (i'm actually doing ok with this one, but it's thwarting resolution #2) be on time for work (i also blame this song, and this song...this one too. ok, i'm on a serious fiona apple jag of late, but really, once i put any music on, i can't seem to get myself out the door).

i've already broken # 3, which is to read the books on my bookshelf before buying more (but i've only purchased 2 books, paris walks and another paris guide. i will actually need those for my upcoming trip, so i figure that's acceptable.

i will give myself a little more time to learn how to bake cinnamon rolls (# 4).

i am actually reading more (perennial # 5).

i also have a bit more time to eat out more in my neighborhood (#6) and visit the 2 art institutions that are around the block from me (the morgan library and scandinavia house -- # 7, # 8).

so all in all, not a terrible start...

and in other respects, it's been a fun couple of weeks.

i've had some pretty great food moments, including a long-awaited reunion with a dear friend at eisenberg's sandwich shop, for an extra sloppy, extra special pastrami and cole slaw sandwich.

i was able to catch alvin ailey at city center just before the official start of new year, an experience which merits a separate post, if i can get my act together this week.

and i caught wind of a romare bearden exhibit at the dc moore gallery (made it to the gallery on the final afternoon).

i thrill to any opportunity to see bearden's work, which i became acquainted with thanks to a course with professor robert o'meally (zora neale hurston professor of english and comparative literature/founder and director of the center for jazz studies at columbia/professor of cool). "a black odyssey" surely broadens the view for those of us who are familiar with bearden as a preeminent "jazz artist" and o'meally does provide some context for those who may wish to contemplate the homer/harlem connection, notions of "home" and the odyssey of the individual (perhaps, "with the right spirit, we too can feel at home on the road, wherever our own odyssey may lead").

i marvel at bearden's collages and recognize the significance of the cut-outs, but of the work shown at the dc moore gallery, i was most taken with the smaller watercolor versions of the black odyssey, especially, odysseus leaves nausicaa (collage version, above), the sea nymph and calypso's sacred grove (which is apparently available as a mousepad. who knew?). i also loved the ink drawings from "the iliad series."

before leaving the gallery at 724 fifth ave, i decided to detour into the tibor de nagy gallery and saw biala: i belong where my easel is (it also happened to be the last day for that show). i'm not at all familiar with janice biala, but liked a couple of the collages very much, "untitled (roma)" and "untitled (loger le bateau sur la seine)." it was a pleasant discovery.

my "wandering" was fruitful in another respect. i learned that the tibor de nagy would next feature jane freilicher, who i've been intrigued by ever since i found out she was the "jane" of frank o'hara's chez jane. i hope to check it out this week...

more on romare bearden at the bearden foundation website...

ny sun's review of romare bearden: a black odyssey here...