Blog Archives

Over at Vanity Fair, here’s a little piece on Anjelica Huston by Lillian Ross.

Comic book

Goodness

via: 1979 Semi-Finalist…

a most-cool site.

Here’s a tasty-looking carrot cake recipe over at the cool site, Cowgirl Chef.

Beautiful.

A friend of mine sent me this New York Times piece by Corey Kilgannon the other day:

Thirty-three years ago, an office worker named Ludwika Mickevicius left her native Poland and became Lucy the bartender in the East Village.

Her proletarian toughness and heavy Polish accent played well with the punks and rebels at Blanche’s bar on Avenue A, near Seventh Street. Ms. Mickevicius became so synonymous with the place, the owner renamed it Lucy’s and then sold her the business 15 years ago.

As the East Village cleaned up around it, Lucy’s remained the prototypical dive bar: a comfortable cave bathed in low red light, with a dingy dropped ceiling and worn linoleum on the floor. One arcade game, one jukebox, two pool tables, two small drinking tables, a dozen stools and a heavy oak bar. All are steeped in the character of Ms. Mickevicius: straightforward and practical. No frills, no nonsense, no whining.

“Many people hear about me and they come in and say, ‘Lucy, don’t change anything; we like it like this,’ ” she said. “Plus, change costs a lot of money.”

The story would have made Joseph Mitchell smile.

My friend used to go to Lucy’s years ago. He told me:

A past relationship of mine, we were a pair of heavy users, and recognized that we were in love. We hung out  at Lucy’s, never called it more than that, in the bag, leaning on the bar making sure we continued the “feeling better” part. We squeezed each other and made out. We loved to scream at each other.  Lucy had to break us up or shut us up. Her advice: “Why don’t you both get married”! Stoned and drunk we looked and said “why not?”

From that point forward we were going to get married. Started speaking to each other about living together. But within two weeks, I could not find her. I spoke to a friend of hers who had told me that she couldn’t handle it and just got in her car and drove west, ending up in San Francisco. She cleaned up and I finally heard from her, apologetic. She ended up marrying another artist/grease monkey out there and seemed happy.

Within a year I got a call, Her husband dryly stated that she died of an overdose, in a corner of a room with the needle stuck in her arm. He sent me her driver’s license and her death certificate along with one photo I always loved of her.

I still miss her, or maybe I really miss what could have been.

[Photo Credit: Robert Simonson]

From George King III in the Post: Hiroki Kuroda has been given a spot in the starting rotation. C.C. Sabathia, of course, is the ace. But nothing is a lock for the rest of the fellas:

Barring an injury, Girardi is going to have put somebody in the bullpen — Hughes, who has 49 relief appearances, and Garcia are the favorites — or send a pitcher to SWB.

“I am not trying to cause a stir,’’ Girardi said. “I am making sure that when we leave spring training we are taking the five best. And to be fair, there are no guarantees.’’

Girardi recalled Don Zimmer offering advice and is reminded of it every day.

“Don’t guarantee spots in spring training,’’ Zimmer told Girardi.

Around Yankeeland:

IIATMS runs down their list of the top 30 Yankee prospects.

Mike Axisa looks at the Russell Martin situation over at River Ave.

Rebecca Glass writes about Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira while Steve Goldman fights off paranoid nightmare blues about the Yankees’ offense over at the Pinstriped Bible.

And over at Lo-Hud, Chad Jennings provides the notes of the day.

Via Pete Abe in the Boston Globe, Joe Girardi had some nice words for Jason Varitek who recently announced his retirement. Meanwhile, right on time, Bobby V is lobbing verbal grenades across enemy lines.

[Photo Credit: New York Times, from their amazing new tumblr site: The Lively Morgue]

Paintings by Dave Choate.

Luke O’Brien with more on Boss George and Fay Vincent over at Deadspin.

Serious Eats looks at fast food fries.

[Photo Credit: Drugs not Hugs]

The subway was backed-up this morning and the 1 ran from 59th to 42nd, skipping my stop. So I got off at 59th and got on the next train. Conductor says: “If you can’t fit…quit.” Then after the doors closed and we were on our way he read us the riot act but he sounded amused. “And remember,” he summed up. “In order for the MTA to be on our way…you must get out of the doorway.”

I laughed. Nobody else around me did. Maybe they’d heard his act for too long to smile. Nothing but a group of angry, sleepy faces.

[Photo Credit: Jonathan Woods]

Andy Pettitte showed up at the Yankees spring training camp yesterday. Chad Jennings has the skinny.

And here’s Pettitte’s take on Manny Banuelos.

[AP Photo, swiped from Lo-Hud]

Two for Tuesday.

Here’s 85 movies that matter according to Martin Scorsese.

Here’s another memorable opening sequence:

Over at the Times‘ food blog Diner’s Journal, Pete Wells compares seven burgers around town to the Shake Shack burger.

[Photo Credit: Todd Kellen]

Check out these fine pictures of New York City by Edi Weitz (for a comprehensive look at his work, click here):

And dig his cool-ass  site: Almost…

Here’s a bit about golf from Pete Dexter’s 2003 novel, “Train”:

“Disappointment was the only thing about the game that lasted. You could try not to get your hopes up, but you might as well tell the cat not to kill the birds.”

The time is 1953; the place, Los Angeles. A burned-out detective, Packard, watches Train, an 18-year-old protegee on the golf course:

“One thought,” Mr. Packard said. “Focus on one thought.”

Train heard that advice before, of course–all the twenty-six handicappers in the world was somewhere on a golf course right now, giving each other swing thoughts–but himself, he didn’t think one thing at a time, and didn’t know how. To start with, everything he saw had names–the ball, the grass, the club, his shoes–and he looked at those things and knew the names, and the names were thoughts. Just like being cold was a thought, and being hungry, and being worried. And besides the thing he was worried about, the worrying itself was a though. Things came and went away; you couldn’t stop it if you tried. He wondered if it was the same way for people that did the big thinking–Eisenhower and General MacArthur–or if somehow they could turn off the names while they was envisioned in a better world.

“What’s your swing thought?” Mr. Packard said behind him. “What are you telling yourself over the ball?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just get out of the way and let it go.”

That seem to amuse Mr. Packard, and he leaned back on his elbows and shut up to watch. The thing that made it work right wasn’t a thought anyway. It was whatever moved the ideas and thoughts along, the breeze that kept things circulating in and out of your head at a speed where nothing was hurried but nothing stayed so long you had to notice. That was all you wanted in your head to swing a golf club, a light breeze to empty things out.

Didn’t mean you had to be stupid to play the game, but it didn’t hurt.

It’s about golf but it could just was easily be about anything, including baseball.

[Photo Credit: Daniel Seung Lee]

Sticking with a theme:

Alex Rodriguez spoke with reporters over the weekend. Chad Jennings has the highlights:

“I’ve always felt that more is better. It’s just the way I’ve always done it. It’s the way I saw my Mom work when I grew up. I just felt that I needed to get up early and do the work, and stay up late and do the work. It’s been a hard lesson to learn, but over the past two or three years I understand that doing my corrective exercises, focusing a lot more on recovery (is best). When you’re in your 20s, you think about training and (then) you think about recovery, and at this point in your career it’s actually the exact opposite. To your point, yeah, I think I learned that lesson… The one thing Philippon told me many years ago when he did (the hip surgery) is that less is more, but I didn’t listen to him then. I went back to see him this winter and he’s very happy with the range of motion and how it looks. He reiterated the importance of less is more. I’m on board now.”

[Photo Credit: Matt Slocum/AP]

The light is changing. I started noticing it a few weeks ago. Now, each day I see it more.

It’s a beautiful thing. Spring is on the way.