Blog Archives

I went once as a kid. I would like to go again. (And I’ve never been to Ellis Island–for shame!)

[Photo Credit: Sally Elena Milota]

Instant Replay comes to baseball. Here’s how it will work.

Max and Kershaw, Miggy and McCutchen: the Award winners.

[Photo Credit: Morry Gash/AP]

I know he can’t hit a lick but I really enjoyed watching Brendan Ryan in the field late last season and hoped that he might return in 2014. According to Joel Sherman the Yanks are close to signing him. I can’t tell you if it is a good move or a dumb move but I can tell you that I will enjoy watching him play short again next year.

[Photo Credit: Patrick Smith/Getty Images]

It’s all about pie this week at the always-impressive Food 52.

Everything you need to make the perfect pie. 

Cook’s Illustrated’s Foolproof Pie Crust. 

Four & Twenty Blackbird’s All-Butter Pie Crust.

Cranberry Sage Pie.

Lemon Chess Pie. 

Oatmeal and Chocolate Pie.

Five links to read before baking a pie. 

Six ways to fancy up your pie. 

Get the Four & Twenty Blackbird new cookbook. 

Coming soon to my old neighborhood. Looks like I’ll have a reason to make a pitstop on the way home to the BX.

[Photo Credit: Dan Nguyen]

Man, this picture is just so dope.

Good Times Roll

Paintings by Cameron Howell.

“Bill’s nicknames are ‘Cuffs’ & ‘The Inspector.'”
2013
acrylic and card stock on panel
20″x 16″

“Benny’s leisure activities include dancing.”
2013
acrylic and card stock on panel
20″ x 16″

There is a good profile of George Clooney in the latest issue of Esquire. Tom Junod is an expert at this kind of celebrity writing and Clooney is a gracious, professional subject. A lot of insights in this piece but this one stands apart:

You must love him.

For one thing, he’s lovable, professionally so. For another, he leaves nothing to chance. If he can’t win you over with his fame, his charm, and his good looks, he will win you over with preparation. It’s not that he’s needy, like an actor; it’s that he’s competitive, like an athlete. He’s always been good at making people love him; he’s not about to give up his edge now.

Of course, he is not often challenged, and risks the fate of a fighter whose dominance is tainted by a lack of worthy opponents. A few years ago, however, he lost one of his dogs to a rattlesnake. He is a dog guy—a little sign about men and dogs adorns a living-room wall otherwise dominated by signed photographs of dignitaries—and he set about to get another, preferably hypoallergenic. He saw a black cocker-spaniel mix on the Web site of a rescue organization and called the number. The woman who answered said she’d be happy to bring the dog to his house, but then she explained that the dog had been abandoned and picked up malnourished off the street. “He has to love you,” she told George Clooney, “or else I have to take him back.”

At first, he found himself getting nervous—“freaking out.” What if the dog didn’t love him? Then he responded. “I had some turkey bacon in the refrigerator,” he says. “I rubbed it on me. I’m not kidding. When she came over, the dog went crazy. He was all over me. The woman said, ‘Oh, my God, he’s never like this. He loves you.’ ”

He has told this story before. He has even told it to Esquire before. That he tells it again—that it’s the first story he tells—serves to announce what is essential about himself: that he’s a man who will do what it takes to win you over, even applying bacon as an unguent.

I’m seduced and repulsed by charming people. I’m sure Clooney would charm the pants off me like he does with most people. But the turkey bacon story is revealing because it doesn’t just suggest that he’ll do whatever it takes to win you over but that he’s willing to cheat to get there. Beneath the surface there is something desperate about it (“You really like me!”. He wanted that dog and the trainer to like him so much that it was more important than giving the dog the home it needed. What we don’t know is how the dog got along with him after the stunt. Maybe he did give him a good home. Did Clooney bring the dog with him on location? Did a house sitter look after the dog most of time?

We don’t know. The seduction is the thing here not necessarily the reality.

[Photo Credit: Nigel Parry]

Groove.

[Photo Via: MPD]

I was on Thompson Street last weekend when I saw an old woman dressed in black. She had on a long raincoat and was wearing bright red lipstick. We smiled at each other and said hello. I asked if she was from the block and she said no but that she was from the neighborhood.

“You’ve seen it change a lot,” I said.

“Yes. Some for the better, some for the worse,” she said.

What was worse I asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t pay attention.”

[Picture by Bags]

Not not Marty but this: From the A.V. Club…

Jackie Gleason : “You’re in the Picture” by werquin

Yes, please.

From IATMS.

Hugo Pratt.

Paintings by Tracy Stuckey.

Wonder wrote it.

More on Short Cuts. Dig this excellent documentary.

After the Red Sox won the Serious in 2004 our man Cliff almost wore his fingers to the bone typing about how the Yanks needed to sign Carlos Beltran. Instead, they went out and got Tony Womack, Jared Wright and Carl Pavano and insisted that there wasn’t enough leftover to pay for Beltran, who reportedly offered to sign for less than he eventually accepted from the Mets.

The Yanks blew it, Cliff wrote all winter and we agreed.

Now, the Yanks have interest in Beltran who is still a useful player.

Let me say on Cliff’s behalf, though not in his words: Too late fuck-o’s.

Woof.