Rest in Peace, Bubba Smith.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

Serious Eats picks their favorite recent sandwich finds in New York.

“Zorah on the Terrace, By Henri Matisse (1912-13)

Here’s Robert Whiting, author of You Gotta Have Wa, on the late Hideki Irabu:

Irabu could be a likable young man when he was in a good mood. Cap pushed back, chewing bubble gum, and talking about his forkball, he seemed quite personable. He could also be very generous—to cite one example, he paid off most of his translator George Rose’s graduate-school loans with part of his first World Series bonus.

But Irabu was often morose and given to long fits of depression. Despite efforts by Derek Jeter, David Cone, and David Wells to help him integrate into the team, he spent much of his time alone, sitting by himself in the Yankee stadium bullpen out in right center field. On the road, he would shut himself in his hotel room poring over anatomy books, trying to understand physiology. (He liked to draw pictures of the human body and became quite skilled at it.) Still, acquaintances described Irabu as being lonely for company—if he hooked up with you for dinner one night, then he’d call you up the next and the night after to go out. It seemed that when he drank, he liked to do so in the company of others, not home alone as others might.

[Picture via The Name’s Duke, MaDuke]

Here’s Charles Simic on the lost art of postcard writing:

Until a few years ago, hardly a day would go by in the summer without the mailman bringing a postcard from a vacationing friend or acquaintance. Nowadays, you’re bound to get an email enclosing a photograph, or, if your grandchildren are the ones doing the traveling, a brief message telling you that their flight has been delayed or that they have arrived. The terrific thing about postcards was their immense variety. It wasn’t just the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal, or some other famous tourist attraction you were likely to receive in the mail, but also a card with a picture of a roadside diner in Iowa, the biggest hog at some state fair in the South, and even a funeral parlor touting the professional excellence that their customers have come to expect over a hundred years. Almost every business in this country, from a dog photographer to a fancy resort and spa, had a card. In my experience, people in the habit of sending cards could be divided into those who go for the conventional images of famous places and those who delight in sending images whose bad taste guarantees a shock or a laugh.

I understand that impulse. When you’re in Rome, everyone back home expects a postcard of the Coliseum or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: send them instead one of a neighborhood pizzeria with five small tables, three potted plants and the elderly owner and his wife wiping their hands on their aprons and smiling broadly. Fans of quaint and kitschy postcards spend their entire vacations on the lookout for some especially outrageous example to amuse their friends back home, while their spouses consult serious guide books and stroll for hours with moist eyes past great paintings and sculptures in some museum.

Once they find the right card, they are faced with the problem of what to write on the other side. A conventional greeting won’t do. A few details about the trip and an opinion or two about the country they are visiting are okay, but even better is to come up with something clever, since every postcard is written with a particular person in mind.

Sweet essay.

Penelope Cruz.

[Picture by Cass Bird]

A few months ago, Mulhholland Books ran a good two-part interview with Pete Hamill and Pete Dexter (part one and part two).

It’s worth checking out:

Hamill: When I first became a newspaperman—June 1st, 1960—it was the beginning of my real life—it really was. When I first got a presscard with my name on it I wore it to bed like dogtags for a month. It said, “Hey, okay, do it. Leave your game on the floor,” you know? And I think there were a whole bunch of us like that, including you, Pete. So we’re going to lose things now. Just the transition from newspapers into websites means that journalism will stay alive, but not the feeling that came with going into a city room, and having guys bounce ideas, and wisecracks, and rotten jokes, and everything else off you before you ever got to write the first sentence of your piece. I mean, that sense of serendipity that comes from being among people who know things you don’t know, and who help educate you every night or every day that you show up, I think that’s going to get lost if you just park in front of a computer somewhere.

But with all that, I don’t have any regrets about it. I feel sad, and melancholy from time to time, but I never think, Gee, I wish I’d gone to work for Goldman Sachs instead.

Dexter: There’s something there that you said that’s really true. A lot of the best things you write come out of, somebody will say something, and it’ll make you think of something else, and bang, people are calling you smart, and…

Hamill: When it’s all about chance.

Dexter: [laughs] You have the chance. And I’m sad about it, and I regret that there’s nobody—you’re not passing along to people now. There’s nobody who’s going to wake up tomorrow and put a press card around his neck, I mean—that just doesn’t happen anymore. And to me, I don’t know any other kind of job I could’ve done.

Hamill: The same with me—that I could have done and be happy at the same time. I mean I could’ve done other jobs I guess—you know, lifting orange crates into trucks or something—but to be happy, to feel like I couldn’t wait to wake up the next day and do it again, that feeling—I don’t think a lot of people have that anymore, including young people going into the business to become journalists.

Hamill’s latest novel, Tabloid City, is about the newspaper business.

Food 52 offers their take on fried green tomatoes.

Smitten Kitchen, again and again.

Tribute:

Man, when I was in high school I had the biggest crush on Michelle Pfieffer. Beautiful, funny and talented. This photo gallery takes me back.

Cannonball A meets Extra P.

[Photo Credit: Herbert List]

Oh, Raquel.

[Top picture via forums france2]

Hey Now Friday, from that drooltastic site, Worship The Feminine.

Food 52 gives us Flank Steak on Texas Toast with Chimichurri. Why the hell not?

R.I.P. Jerome Liebling. He will be missed.

Butterfly Boy, 1949.

Hear the drummer get wicked.

Josef Hoflehner: Photographer.

Gorgeous stuff.