Coaxed into covering a chocolate show involving fashion made of chocolate, I cast aside my inhibitions. “Unleash the chocoholicism!” is what this event invites. Throngs descend upon the West Side Highway, a sight I’m more accustomed to seeing in the daylight, for the Armory Show. West 50th Street is a desolate strip between 10th Avenue and now, all FedEx and horse stables and double parked cars. I stop over the Amtrak rails, my favorite spot in Midtown, it reminds me of Manhattan’s history as a hub of industry and trade, the grand connector between far off lands and the heartland, the mountains, the desert, the Pacific Coast…now Doritos wrappers and Burger King bags line the rails, probably needles and condoms and shit, too. Well that’s history, too. “What opera is like a railwayline? —The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!”
Want to leave Earth, and all its nasty problems? Who doesn’t. Sign up for the ultimate camping trip to Mars.
Apparently former NASA engineer Jim McLane thinks that it will be possible to put a person (well, a man, of course) on Mars much sooner if we dispense with the notion that we’ve got to get that astronaut back to earth. A one-way ticket to ride. It’s a very imaginative and romantic proposition on the part of this engineer, a kind of adventurous spirit one doesn’t hear championed too much these days. He calls his proposal “Spirit of the Lone Eagle” after Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight from New York to Paris in 1927.
Sign me up. Earth is so last century.
[Gizmodo via Universe Today]
Charming, earnest, homespun, scientific.
Diner Journal is the quarterly food magazine published by chefs/restaurateurs behind Diner, Marlow & Sons and Bonita, that trinity of Williamsburg restaurants at the forefront of the seasonal-local-farm food movement in the area, well ahead of the curve.
To enjoy oysters & prosecco at Marlow & Sons is to escape the cesspool. Attend regularly.
Diner Journal is essential reading for those curious about Old World cheese caves in the New World or deceptively simple, but overwhelmingly flavorful recipes worth their weight in Mayan gold, such as Chocolate Shortbread with Sea Salt (see the version I made in the above photo), featured in their latest issue, No. 6: Winter 2007. To die for.
Monkey Town chef Coleman Lee Foster derives some inspiration for their menu from The Futurist Cookbook, a culinary manifesto penned in 1932 by F.T. Marinetti, which prescribes such things as blowing from a trumpet between bites of beef or most famously, to avoid eating pasta, as it dulls the senses and slows the body: The Futurist version of death. Food, it was thought, should be about a pure aesthetic experience, an explosion of the senses (i.e. one should not eat for nutrition - how pedestrian! There are pills for that…) It was also about juxtaposing unexpected elements with food.
This Saturday, Monkey Town presents “Eat Art,” which they describe as “an immersive culinary experiment based on the neurological phenomenon of synesthesia (http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/) and inspired by Daniel Spoerri’s Eat Art—which encompassed sculpture, performance, and the actual opening (and closing) of several restaurants.”
An 11 course tasting menu, inspired by 11 texts, to be read live:
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
Amuse sized rye bread, shredded pork and fig sandwich
Gastroporn by Alexander Cockburn
Seared Tuna Salad, Roasted Potato, Tarragon Aioli, Black Olive Puree
The Accidental Connoisseur by Lawrence Osborne
Truffled Duck Torchon, Sage Mustard Demi
Down and Out in London and Paris by George Orwell
Baguette with roasted garlic
Horse Crazy by Gary Indiana
Seared Scallop, pepto bismal vinaigrette, coffee paint
Food and Healing by Annemarie Colbin
Cucumber and Tomato Water
Dante and the Lobster by Samuel Beckett
Seared Lobster roll with mustard, goat cheese bisque
Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine by F.T. Marinetti
False egg of carrot and cauliflower
Fat Substitutes: A Taste of the Future by Marian Segal
Lamb carpaccio, arugula, smoked pork fat flan, sweet potato dust
Tang Dynasty by Eric Banks
Long Island duck breast, local chanterelle puree, hazelnut thyme sauce
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Cake
1899 born out of wedlock in a union between her mother (Lila Barrington Ryder) and Macgregor Mathers, the chief of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn (the year before Aleister Crowley declared independence and created the Golden Dawn).
when still pregnant with Irma, her mother moved back to her family in America where she died during childbirth.
Reports of her childhood vary greatly. Either she was living with her grandmother in abject poverty and started prostituting herself from an early age or she was born into wealth and privilege that she saw as bourgeoisie and suffocating, so rebelled and was subsequently disinherited.
With her fourth husband, Irma moved to Paris during Annes Folles (”the crazy years”). She had an affair with director Dudley Murphy, appearing in “Ballet Mecanique”.
The Hotel de Balzac named a gin, mint and ginger cocktail the “Ryder Bow”.
She left her fifth marriage and started playing concertina with Creole french trumpeter Thackery “Downtrodden” White on banjo and mandolin.
Continue reading ‘Irma Ryder Bow- New artist to watch’
Bombay/Mumbai: A city in the midst of renaissance and cultural revolution. To actually see that happening in one’s lifetime…this is quite rare. It makes one feel less jaded and cynical about the world, life…good conversation with people living here, talking to them about their city and witnessing the way the old mixes with the new and it all clashes and comes together in a way that’s totally Indian. It’s Bombay Electric.
Dualties, construction, deconstruction…Bombay is in a sense is the urban equivalent of a dualist theory, a push and pull with tension and a sense of chaos. It’s a dirty, polluted city. Smelly, full of poverty, and absolutely no silence. Except for right now, the point in the wee hours that I refer to as “low horn” when the incessant honking of horns that is this city’s soundtrack has finally died out…for a few hours at least. I suppose it’s just a manifestation of all these millions of people fighting for space, and for acknowledgement of their physical presence. I am in awe of people who can call this place their home. For the majority, its 1000 times more difficult than my life. 100,000 times more.
A woman told me today that there are woman who spend their entire days working, from early morning train commutes to their jobs in the city, from far outlying suburbs, to the evening hours where they are actually already at work on their housework, cutting and chopping vegetables and practically cooking the evening meal on the train. Maybe they’re also doing their family’s laundry.
And yet on the other hand, what brings me to Bombay is their fashion week - a strange reason, yes. This evening I went to a socialite’s house and there were pictures scattered throughout of her meeting Bill Clinton, or perfectly posed like some kind of kept woman with her perfect-looking children. She makes diamond and emerald jewelry as a hobby and hosts charity events for Save the Children.
