Coney, here we come!

So, a week from tomorrow I'm off to Coney Island with dear friends and loved ones for the annual Mermaid Parade. In addition to amazing costumes and huge crowds and twirling rides (I am not doing the Cyclone again, however) there will be much junk consumed.

Thankfully (or maybe not so), one of my mailing lists, called Hungry Girl has put out a list of just how much some of that stuff costs in calories. Not that it'll change anything, but it's nice to know:

Soft Pretzel: 340 calories, 2g fat

Funnel Cake (whole): 760 calories, 44g fat

Fair Popcorn (7 cups, no extra butter): 400 calories, 27g fat

Caramel Apples: 300 calories, 1g fat

Chocolate Covered Frozen Banana: 240 calories, 4g fat

Elsewhere in the newsletter they note that a cone of cotton candy is actually only about 100 calories (since it's mostly air and spun sugar) while a sno-cone is something like 500-600 because of the syrup. Now, nobody goes to Coney to diet, but I like having the figures rolling around ... for reference's sake.

I am having a funnel cake. No question.

Like, totally

So, it's in Russian. Which means I can't read it.

And it requires a plug in (I suspect Active-X) that my Mac at work and Firefox won't let me grab. But I sense when I get home this evening I will have tapped a rich vein of 80s videos ... perhaps even better than YouTube's.... here.


via Grouse.

Garden party, hold the pasta

Queens gets knocked a lot. It's not as hip as Brooklyn, it sure ain't Manhattan, and it doesn't even have the suburban veneer of Staten Island or the danger zone allure (such as that might be) of the Bronx. It's the borough with a booger half out of its nose.

Unfairly, by the way. At least where I've lived, I've always liked Queens, and I'm particularly fond of where I live now, in Jackson Heights. It's actually an historic district of co-ops that were some of the first ever in the country when they were constructed in the 1920s. (I only say "some of the first" because there's a tendency to overstate JH's importance, by the JH locals themselves; see more below. They may well be the first planned co-op community in the U.S. Or not.) Anyway, several of the buildings around here were planned so that they would wrap around a city block (or at least would have a sister building that mirrored a "C" construction and the both of them would take up the city block) and the strip in the center was reserved for garden planning. They're private, only accessible to the residents of the building, and once a year they're opened up for viewing. I went in 2001 on a gray day; this Saturday when the Jackson Heights Beautification Society held its 2006 opening, the weather was darned near perfect.

Went with my guy on a tour of all ten gardens. They ranged from the scruffy to the sublime. We started out at the end of the tour, and No. 10 was not necessarily an auspicious beginning. Maybe they put it at the end so that if you get tired and have to skip one, this is the one to skip. We were the first visitors to No. 10 and got a little tour by their character of a gardener (volunteer). He gets funds for half of the garden, the part he lives on and the other half, which is for a building run by renters and therefore is completely untended except for his efforts, comes out of his pocket. This means the rental half is fairly surreal. He likes putting faces on trees (those things creep me out) and he's got cats -- plastic ones, ceramic ones, masks of ones -- implanted everywhere. He's made a pile with a club "growing" out of the ground and set up a sign nearby explaining the origin of the "Egyptian" plant, which was allegedly used to beat the crap out of anyone who harmed a cat in Egypt. He was quite pleased with his fakery. There was also a sign affixed to a tree inviting everyone to a "Squirrel Barbecue." Love for the animals is limited to certain species, it appears. We also learned the long story of his cat who ran up a tree during a snowstorm, and how the fire department wouldn't come out to help.



The other gardens were prettier, but none more interesting, I tell you what. And they all have their own personality, with variations on flowers, grass, asphalt and benches. One had swings, so the guy and I partook. One or two had fountains (I like calling them water features, after James Lileks' woes), the benches in one were completely made of concrete. And one had tall pillars, as if it was a very well-kept ruin.



One building was even holding a bake sale (the cannier buildings all had some kind of baked goods or water or soda offerings) with these very elaborate buttercream cupcakes, a la the Cupcake Cafe. That same building gave us a bottle of water for free, which was very nice of them. The guy and I lamented that my building didn't have such a garden, because we'd use it all the time -- I'd love to read the Sunday paper out there if it was warm, or just read a book on a bench and exist in that little oasis. They are often very quiet (barring No. 10, which was essentially next to the 7 train) and completely peaceful. One garden was rife with dangling objects to catch the light, or faces that looked like rocks, and many had Buddhas or Vishnus or various Asian-themed statuaries. And one had sleepy kitties:



Who were just adorable. We hit all ten, including the very last one (No. 1) which should have been one of the prettiest, but has never grabbed my attention. Rather than being an enclosed private garden, it's just a big walkway up to the front doors, an inverted "V" shape with a large cascading pool, and a spurting fountain. Those might be nice, but the bottom of those pools is painted a highly-suspect aquamarine never found in nature, and it just has a bad-retro feel to it. Plus, it's not a true garden because you can't sit anywhere and enjoy. The guy and I walked in and saw they had their "Best Garden" plaque sitting out on a table with cookies. The date was 1998. "We just can't seem to find the time to hang it up," the woman noted with sadness. I told her if she waited two years they could have a 10 year dedication ceremony. Then she said something -- the guy and I would both swear on this -- about "if you go all the way to the back, they have pasta." Which seemed an odd "thanks for visiting" offering, but we couldn't locate it anyway. If there was pasta, we found none.



So we went back to my place and had ginger-and-molasses cookies.

I remember when I lost my mind

On the one hand, if I were still 18, I'd be so sarcastic and condescending right now. To myself.

But since I'm twice that, I get to be all excited when something new -- even something as stale as several weeks old -- gets me revved up.

So I will announce it here: I'm in love with Gnarls Barkley. Or should I say I'm crazy about him/them/it?

Yes, I am late to the party. But I'm here, and with extra beer.

In addition to my Gnarls purchase this evening, I also got two Dixie Chicks CDs (support for the cause, natch, but "Not Ready to Make Nice" is an excellent track, and plus now I'm going to see them in August) and Pink's latest, so I am actually excited about new music again. The iPod won't know what hit it.

Thanks, guys.

I really got to get to bed now.

Evil Genius

So, if you can't think of anything better to do with your weekend, I highly recommend a double feature: The remake of "The Omen" and "The Da Vinci Code."

The latter film was already given far too much discussion here a few days back. "The Omen," on the other hand, is another story.

I was lucky enough to see it at a screening held in an old Gothic Lower East Side synagogue, now part of some kind of charitable foundation, but still pretty rickety. Behind me sat Liza Minelli. Mia Farrow was leading the actor-boy-Damien (still apparently in character, based on his sour expression) around by the hand. What could be more terrifying?

Well, the film was spooky in spots and cheaty-scary in others (there are more than one sudden jump cuts sync-ed up with Very Loud Dramatic Music so that you jump as much from the volume as the images). There's at least one scene where you think, "Yeah, they could have made that better." I point to a dream-sequence (not immediately obvious that it is so) where Julia Stiles is brushing her teeth, and Damien wheels by on his Razr scooter. They cut to see him looming in the doorway, then cut back to her. She turns, not sure if he was there or not. A better scene would not have included the cut; he'd have just wheeled by and paused and then gone on, and if you as a viewer missed it because you were focused on the foam in Stiles' mouth, sucks to be you. But that's not the movie we were seeing.

The one particularly spooky/surreal moment comes when Mia Farrow is feeding Damien strawberries. It shouldn't be spooky or surreal, and yet it is: They're on chairs facing each other, and in his playroom, and he's just intensely watching her as she puts plump berry after plump berry between his teeth. Which naturally turns his mouth a smeary red. And then off he goes on the Razr again to commit mayhem. That's an effective scene.

But what I liked best was Liev Schreiber. When he's in grief in a muscle shirt in a darkened Italian pensione, he was the embodiment of hotness. And I've never been a big Schreiber fan before. Talented, sure. Sexy? Not my type. But he's the best thing about the movie.

Anyhow, I like the contrast. In "The Omen," the Church is so ineffectual and weak that it can't control its priests long enough to prevent them from giving The Antichrist away to some random family; in "Da Vinci" the Church is so overwhelmingly powerful that they can cover up a major revelation for 2000 years. Some consistency, folks, eh?



But the truth is that you really shouldn't go see either film. Or if you do, include "Who Killed the Electric Car?" on your list of future pictures to see. I went to that last night (it opens June 28). For those who don't live in California, and for those who don't own cars (I'm two for two) and for those who don't think about car emissions/global warming/environment issues (okay, got me there, I'm concerned regardless), it might not seem important. And yet, and yet.

In essence: We used to have electric cars. Way back, early on. Cheap petroleum got the better of electricity, however, and at that point nobody'd heard of smog, and asthma, and lung infections in children, and so they said, so what if most people prefer the quiet efficiency of a big appliance you can charge up at home? And so they dropped the electric car. Fast forward, and there's word that an electric car is a viability. California's emissions board decides to get on board with this and passes a law requiring 0% emissions in a few years. (That means the car manufacturers would have to sell cars with zero emissions by that year in California, or not sell at all.)

Know how when you get a chore handed to you you really don't want to do, and so you drag it out and fuck it up just a little here and there, until finally mom/boss/whoever comes over and takes it from your hands and says "If you can't do a good job, don't do it at all" and you're all relieved because you dragged your ass and now you're free of that?

Translate that to the car companies/oil industry and you've got the recipe for why the electric car failed. It really didn't fail: They had excellent, inspired engineers who made slick little futuristic cars, they got celebrity endorsements, they had waiting lists and people willing to charge it up. But the car manufacturers and oil industry would rather squeeze every last dollar out of a dying industry (combustible engines) than move forward, and so they refused to actually sell the cars. They leased them. And then sued California. Which backed down, and negotiated. The leases were not renewed. And I tell you, I'm still not a car fanatic, but waste gets me -- and watching GM round up all of those slick little cars and put them without regard on the backs of trucks to be squashed -- for no good reason -- made me sick.

There's much more to the documentary, of course. But understand this: Whatever you thought was wrong with electric cars (and honestly, I thought they were still around, just had never gotten a big rollout yet) -- you will be proven wrong.

When I go to LA later this year, I'm going to try and rent a Prius. It's as close as I can get, at least for now.

Besides, Damien told me I should.

Big Dreams, Micro Minds

So, I'm running late for work. Which means that BBC America finishes its run on WNYC and we switch over to the local broadcast of The Brian Lehrer Show. They're talking Monday Morning Politics, as per usual, and have New Republic editor Peter Beinart in the studio. Beinart has written a book with the sure-to-annoy title of "The Good Fight: Why Liberals -- and Only Liberals -- Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again and how much longer could this book title be, please, I have to go make lunch or something"

Anyway, I don't truly believe (and this as a good upstanding liberal) that only liberals have the knowhow to figure out the war on terror, but I'm going along with all of this because as a movement, we need a little fist-pumping. OK. So, Lehrer gets a call. The caller self-identifies as conservative. He takes issue with Beinart's contention and says the reason liberals can't solve anything related to terror is that "liberals think in the micro, conservatives think in the macro."

He cites bag searches on the subway as his justification: Liberals will fight them, he says, because they're so focused on the individual, and conservatives will go along happily because they recognize you have to give up some small things, as a contribution (my word, my itals) to the fight on terror. Conservatives look at the big picture: We all have to contribute. Liberals would be ninnies and say it's all about the rights of the individual and nobody should be forced to have his or her bag checked.

I'm waiting for the followup from either Lehrer and Beinart, easily squashing this theory for the nonsense it is, and instead we get a mealy mouthed diversionary reply that seems to ignore the point. It's several hours later that I'm writing this, so the content of that reply is already mush in my head. Mush out, mush in.

The real reply is this: Macro/micro my ass.

No. 1: At what point did the conservatives cede individual rights to liberals? I thought liberals (in their POV) were all about big government inciting us to live like socialists, to pay more taxes so we all have more social services, creation of the nanny state, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Oh, this must have happened when Shrub's government got up in everyone's ass with security issues, big tax breaks and enormous government (to the point of creating a whole new bureau with the Homeland Security people). That must have been it.

But really:

No. 2: How small is your perspective to think that anyone who protests bag checks (or wiretapping or publication of 'classified' coverup documents) is doing it for the individual? The reason you protest the small infringements is so that you don't let them build into big ones, which do affect the larger populace -- the "macro." If you let them search your bag without cause today, why not your house tomorrow? Why not give you anal probes before you board a plane? You have to get at these things when they start, even before they start, or suddenly you've walked on to that slippery slope. This is what small-headed, small-thinking people just never seem to get. The fact is the liberals are thinking in the big picture, but the big picture was too big for that caller to perceive. And that is really what the problem is with conservatives.

Did we get that from our host and guest? Not a frickin' word. That said, I then did have to go to work and may have missed the genius. Not likely.

********

Related, but different: I'm very pleased that we can now officially say there are no domestic or international grievances or problems greater than the subject of gay marriage. The president's attention has duly turned to the No. 1 issue on his To-Do items list, and since he's cleared it of all other subject matter and potential issues, it's about time he dealt with all this other stuff. Will someone suggest where I should stay in the rebuilt New Orleans? And now that global warming is over, how about we all just get a bunch of new SUVs with 10mpg, spewing diesel? And since Iraq and Iran and the whole Middle Eastern region is at peace, I think I'll go there right after my New Orleans trip. Thanks, Prez, you really know how to take things in their proper order. I'm looking forward to our newly-educated young workforce, whose student loans are paid off by public service and my national health care initiative to take effect.

What a great day to be American!