The Times also had a little piece on Esposito’s Pork Sausage store, one of my old haunts when I lived in Brooklyn.

I was in a book store on Friday night and this caught my eye: Denys Wortman’s New York: Portrait of the City in the 30s and 40s.

I’d never heard of Wortman before but I was immediately taken with his work.

Yesterday, the Times ran a long feature about Wortman who is the subject of a show at the Museum of the City of New York through March:

If there is a single constant in the creative world, it is that fame has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight. One prime example is the cartoonist Denys Wortman, who from 1924 to 1954 contributed six drawings a week to The New York World and its successors.

His feature, “Metropolitan Movies,” was admired for its strikingly naturalistic portrayal of daily life in Gotham. Using a single panel and a conversational caption, Mr. Wortman adroitly summoned up an entirely believable world of housewives talking across fire escapes, girls in the subway hashing over last night’s date, and men and women trying to make a buck in diners, offices, music halls and factories — or struggling to keep afloat during the Great Depression. Mr. Wortman’s drawings were also beautifully composed and finely worked, a legacy of his art school years, when he studied alongside future Ashcan school painters like Edward Hopper and George Bellows, and with their guru Robert Henri.

Even then “there was nothing quite like it,” said the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, who enjoyed the drawings as a boy. “His work didn’t seem studied. It was as if you were looking out the window — or my window in the Bronx.” And because it was syndicated nationwide (as “Everyday Movies”), Mr. Wortman’s world spread far beyond the Hudson.

But in 1958, four years after his retirement, Mr. Wortman died of a heart attack. By then cartooning had become character-driven and graphically streamlined (think of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts”) while art was ruled by the Abstract Expressionists. And when The World’s successor The World-Telegram and Sun folded, he was as forgotten as yesterday’s fish wrap.

The book and the show look like a must.

Rest in Peace, Norris Church Mailer, dead at 61.

Mailer was the subject of an excellent profile by Alex Witchel earlier this year.

From Jon Heyman via the indefatigable Craig Calcaterra:

The Yankees are busy with Derek Jeter and Cliff Lee, but after that’s all said and done, Mariano Rivera will be tops on their priority list. Jon Heyman reports today that, when they do get to him, they’ll find that he wants a two-year deal, not a one-year deal.

This should not be a problem. I think you pretty much give Mariano Rivera whatever he wants. At least within reason. He earned 2011 by continuing to be awesome in 2010. While, sure, he might fall off a cliff eventually, who has a greater right to ask for an extra year than Mariano Rivera? He’s carried them for 15 years. They can carry him for one if, for some reason, next season is his last effective one.

Agreed. No problems here. Two years sounds beautiful to me.

[Drawing by Ricardo Lopez Ortiz]

Ozark Ike: You gotta keep your eye on the ball. Eye. Ball. Eye-ball. That’s a gag, son. Gag that is.

Frank Bruni on eating in the City of Angels:

Sure, New York also has a bit of everything, or rather a lot of everything. But its crowdedness and competitiveness make it the Everest to L.A.’s Kilimanjaro: you practically need a Sherpa to tackle New York effectively, and you just might lose a digit or limb. L.A. is more reasonably scaled, with the newest, hottest restaurants less likely to book up a solid month in advance. When a friend and I dropped in — at the height of lunch hour, no less — to one of the four branches of Umami Burger, the cult favorite of the city’s ground-beef set, we were seated immediately, in comfy chairs at a big table that could have accommodated four. In contrast, almost any mealtime visit to any location of New York’s Shake Shack involves a significant stretch of time — 20 minutes isn’t exceptional — on a serpentine line. That’s for counter service. At Umami, someone actually waits on you.

The Umami story demonstrates the enterprise and speed with which L.A.’s restaurateurs are tackling trends. When Adam Fleischman, its principal owner, opened the first Umami in Mid-Wilshire in January 2009, he was entering an arena brimming with competitors, each with fanatical adherents. There was Father’s Office, with its unyielding commandment that arugula and caramelized onions should dress every patty. There was 8 oz. Burger Bar, which permitted free will. And there was of course In-N-Out, less restaurant than fast-food franchise but perhaps the earliest architect of the bridge between McDonald’s and self-regarding gourmands.

Fleischman had a hook that sagely took into account the self-consciously erudite posturing of so many food enthusiasts today. ‘‘I wanted to do something with umami,’’ he says, referring to the so-called fifth taste (after sweet, salty, sour and bitter), which is vaguely described as ‘‘savoriness’’ and until recent years wasn’t universally accepted as an actual, definable trait. So each of the burgers at Umami is constructed with an emphasis on ingredients thought to be catalysts for umami. The caramelized onions on the signature burger are seasoned with star anise ‘‘because it’s an umami booster,’’ Fleischman says. The burger is also dressed with sautéed shiitake mushrooms, Parmesan cheese and oven-dried tomatoes, all thought to be umami bombs.

We Love L.A.!

[Photo Credit: Alex Eats World, Signature L.A. Direct]

The Boss is lost on me but that’s just a matter of taste. Still, I regard him as a great musician and songwriter and performer. For the many of you who dig Bruce, check out this post over at Pitchers and Poets.

This is one tune of his that I love:

And here is a 1975 newspaper article on the Boss by our pal John Schulian.

A friend just got me “Ad Hoc at Home,” by Thomas Keller.

I’m stoaked.

[Photo Credit: Jun-Blog]

Garry Wills just published a memoir. He’s also got a piece on Gary Trudeau in the New York Review of Books celebrating 40 years of Doonesbury:

Most comic strips run out of creative energy after their initial inspiration. Trudeau has just kept improving, year after year, in part because he stays so close to changing events. He still has his ear for the way young people talk through all the varying slang fashions (perhaps helped by his children). At any rate, he has never been better than in the last six years. B.D., who always wore his football helmet when he was not wearing an army helmet in Vietnam, goes to Iraq as an aging National Guard adjunct and his tank is hit by an IED. The strip blacks out, and when he emerges from the darkness, he is seen for the first time without a helmet of some kind—and we find his hair is white at the temples. But that is the least shock—he has also lost a leg. The beloved original character of the strip is tragically maimed.

Trudeau has had some kind of career, indeed.

I’ve seen Fran Lebowitz around. Lots of people have. I think a few times at Lucky Strike fifteen years ago. She’s famous for being a cool New Yorker. I don’t know too much about her and can’t tell whether she’s great or annoying.

Now, Martin Scorsese has made a documentary about Lebowitz called “Public Speaking.”

I’m game.

Hackman plugging “Twice in a Lifetime” in Canada.

Nice post on the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s work over at the New Yorker’s Photo Booth.

Here’s more:

There’s always something tasty over at Food 52.

Childhood memories…

Great win for the Jets on Lasagna Sunday in the Bronx.

Couple of freestyles from the old Stretch Armstrong Show on WKCR, featuring the Artifacts and Mic Geronimo over the “Nappy Heads” beat.

Yes, we have no pastrami…

Over at SI.com, Joe Sheehan offers up a savvy GM’s guide to free agency:

Jorge De La Rosa

There aren’t many bargains in this year’s market; De La Rosa could be the best. The 29-year-old hits the market off a disappointing season by traditional metrics: 8-7, 4.22 ERA, just 121 2/3 innings in 20 starts after missing two months with a finger injury. Look deeper and you see a lefty who strikes out eight men per game, whose arm hasn’t been damaged by overuse and who has been coming into his own since the Rockies picked him up in 2008. De La Rosa has become a groundball/strikeout pitcher in his late twenties, peaking last year as more than half the balls in play off him were put on the ground. His ERA was higher than it should have been due to a fluky-high 15.8 percent HR/FB rate, against a career mark of around 11 percent De La Rosa is 2 1/2 years younger than Cliff Lee, doesn’t have Lee’s back problems and will provide at least 80 percent of the value for maybe 20 percent of the cost. You could blow out the field by offering three years at $8 million each and get the best deal of the offseason, something teams such as the Twins, Tigers and Brewers should be eager to do.

And this, from Mark Feinsand and Peter Botte in the News:

According to a source, the Yankees have expressed interest in lefthander Jorge de la Rosa, considered by many to be one of the top free-agent pitchers available after Lee.

De la Rosa, who turns 30 in April, went 8-7 with a 4.22 ERA with the Rockies last season, although he pitched well during the second half, allowing three earned runs or less in 13 of is final 14 starts.

De La Who?

07 Dog Eat Dog

Sunny day in New York, so…