What a Way to Go

Every time I fly, I hear the flight crew tell me that tampering with or disabling the restroom smoke detectors is a federal crime. I've never been a smoker, so I don't understand the overwhelming urge to start tearing apart the tiny airplane lavatory just to get a few drags on a cigarette. In fact, I like to spend as little time as possible in that awful little closet. And I'm a little unclear on exactly what happens when I flush the toilet in the airplane. It makes a godawful slurping sound that makes me think the waste goes right from the plane to the bowels of hell. I always make it a point to hold onto any loose objects when I'm flushing -- that thing sounds like it could suck down a small child. Generally, I dislike using airplane lavatories and try to avoid them at all costs. I like to take the window seat on airplanes and as a result, I hate getting up during a flight. Getting some people to get out of their airplane seat is quite an operation sometimes: remove hearphones ... close laptop ... put up seatback table ... clear lap ... unbuckle seat belt ... stand up in aisle ... etc. I'd rather just hold it.

But why all the talk about airplane lavatories? This morning on a flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta, a sixty-one year old woman was found dead in the airplane's lavatory as the plane prepared to land. This is a very sad story and I am in no way making the light of this woman's death. (The preliminary indications are that she died of natural causes.) This is just one of those stories that makes you pause. I wonder what this woman was going through when she headed for the restroom. Was she feeling ill? Or did it all just come as a suprise? Sixty-one is young in this day and age. This was just another reminder for me that when your number is up, it's up. You never know when your ticket is going to be punched, or whether you'll be able to return to your seat with your seatbelt securely fastened and your seatback in the full, upright position. Rest in peace, Delta passenger.

It ... just ... makes...me ......... uncomfortable

Got a surprise phone call from a college buddy today, direct from Hong Kong, where he now lives. Although he was always was stone-faced and sort of laconic, as a big time banking executive, he's even more so now. When I get phone calls from him, I imagine him leaning back in a big leather chair tapping his finger tips together like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. After every question I ask there is a several second delay, as he ponders his response. I used to think that this was the delay from the satellite signals, but it happens when we're both on the same continent too.

Silence of any kind makes me uncomfortable. I've wondered if this is a New York thing -- do New Yorkers hate silence or do they just not have much experience with it? I run into this problem with people from the midwest sometimes -- amazingly they seem perfectly comfortable sitting in a restaurant not talking. Nonetheless, I think silence is becoming foreign to us. At my nephew's confirmation a few months back, a bishop from the remote south pacific came to preside. He remarked on how everyone walked around carrying a water bottle, talking on a cellphone and listening to their headphones -- we don't do silence much anymore.

But even in the days before the ubiquitous ipod, I found myself uncomfortable with silence. I once ended a date after ninety minutes after a series of exchanges like this:

Paul: "So how long have you lived in Atlanta?"
Date: "One year and ten months." [silence]
Paul: "Oh, so where did you move here from?"
Date: "Dawsonville." [silence]
Paul: "So, that's where you grew up?"
Date: "Yes" [silence]

We were eating Chinese food that night. I remember trying to decide what would be more painful, trying to keep this conversation going or taking the chopsticks on the table and just driving them into my eardrums. I opted for calling the evening early instead of deafening myself.

I am not really in a position to criticize too much, however. When I was teaching history a few years ago, more than a few of my students commented on ... the ... long ......... pauses ... that I .... insisted on inserting into my ................... lectures. When I told the woman I was dating about these comments, she exclaimed, "oh yes, that drives me crazy!" There's a tiny delay in the relay between my brain and my mouth sometimes. I guess I'll try to cut down on the awkward pauses in my public speaking if my friends stop calling me from Asia acting like Monty Burns.

My Mouth Waters Just Thinking About It

Eddie's Pizza in New Hyde Park, NY is one of the dining jewels of the New York suburbs. My family started going to Eddie's in 1964, and we've been savoring every morsel of the delightfully thin-and-chewy, yet crispy-still pizza every since. Whenever the ex-patriot Long Islanders in my family return to visit my parents, a visit to Eddie's is almost always on the agenda. Unlike mass-produced pizza indistinguishable from the cardboard box it came in, or the over-the-top yuppie pizzas of today -- do we really need sushi on a pizza? -- Eddie's is straight up good eatin'. Now that I'm living in Atlanta it is an example of the authencity of the northeast that I miss. My father's favorite fact about Eddie's is that it has the distinction in the Zagat restaurant guide of having the widest gap between the quality of its decor and the quality of its food. Atlanta's Olive Garden and "Johnny's New York Style Pizza" will never measure up to the Italian eateries which I ate in growing up. (I still remember the sports radio guys in New York cackling about a Creative Loafing -- Atlanta's version of the Village Voice -- survey in which Atlantans named the Olive Garden as their favorite Italian eatery.)

I was reminded of Eddie's today because my nephew had created an "Eddie's Pizza Lovers" group on Facebook. He had asked me to join a while back, but I had no idea that he was the creator of the group. As of today the Facebook Group has 128 members -- a very good following I think. As one of their chief promoters, he should get a free pizza the next time he goes to Eddie's ... but that'll never happen. From the comments on the message board, I see facebookers who have moved from Long Island are thinking about Eddie's longingly the way I do. I'm even salivating as I write this. I'd trade chicken and waffles for a sausage bar pie and syrupy ginger ale to wash it down with anytime!

Once in a While a Movie Surprises You

Most people know Adam Carolla as the host of The Man Show on Comedy Central or as the co-host of Loveline, an MTV staple for a while. His whiney tone and sluggish delivery make him a bit of an oddity. Despite his shortcoming as a performer, he does have a strong following. I'm sure high school boys enjoy his flatulence humor, his rants against traffic cops, and his constant references to porn. I remember when Carolla was among those auditioning for the Late Late Show gig that Craig Ferguson eventually landed, and he made an appearance on David Letterman's show. Letterman was almost speechless as Carolla went on about how he hated the custom of blowing out birthday candles, "who wants a cake covered in snot?" he asked. Letterman blinked and pursed his lips.

All that being said, listening to and watching Adam Carolla has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. For a while I regularly tuned into his radio show with Dr. Drew Pinsky to hear his ridiculous rants -- "are there any people on this planet stupider than our listeners?" he would ask. Carolla has since left that show to replace Howard Stern on morning radio on the west coast, and he has fallen off the radar screen a bit for me.

When I saw the reviewers on Richard Roeper's At the Movies show give positive notice to Carolla's movie, The Hammer (2007), I was stunned and intrigued. As it turns out, this movie is actually an amusing little character study with elements that can appeal to everyone. It has a boxing storyline that avoids being corny even if it is predictable, and it has a love story that is believable and unsentimental. Carolla is even able to incorporate all his favorite schtick (the snot on the cake, lesbians at the hardware store, pedantic state troopers, idiocy from his days as a carpenter) without making this feel like this is just material left over from The Jimmy Kimmel Show. I was most surprised by not being inundated with gross-out humor; Superbad, a much better film, had a much much higher squirm factor for me. Make no mistake, this is not a great film by any means, but if you see it on cable or you're having trouble finding something in the video store, give it a shot. It's worth a chuckle.

¡Viva El Sal del Tocino!

My friends know that I consider eating to be one of the ultimate joys of life. As I get older I find myself becoming slightly more discriminating about what I eat, but generally, as a former girlfriend once said, I have the palate of a golden retriever. As a non-conventional eater who hasn't seen his abs since the 6th grade, I have my own food pyramid: beer, bacon, cheese and lard. Admittedly, cardiologists might not endorse my diet, but I have a great uncle who lived till almost 90 who drank a chocolate milkshake every day of his life. And of all the four groups, bacon is my favorite. I think if I had six months to live I would eat bacon at every meal. (Consequently, I would then have three months to live, by I digress.) A good friend of mine from college, known as Johnny K, swore that all the bad publicity about bacon being bad for you was a lie, a lie perpetrated by people trying to hoard all the yummy bacon. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I cannot incorporate bacon into every meal. One problem is that I never buy bacon in the grocery store. Hence, having bacon-ey deliciousness generally has to wait for restaurants -- until now. Although I have not gotten my hands on a bottle yet, I have discovered a product called "bacon salt" that purports to make everything taste like bacon. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it. If it even approaches the tastiness of that salad bar favorite, the baco-bit, I will be ecstatic. In fact, it gets me to thinking about all the wonderful possibilities. There is a bar here in Atlanta that serves a drink called the "Dean Martini," a martini that comes with one lucky strike cigarette. In that vein, any Atlanta bar willing to make its margaritas with bacon salt will become an instant sensation. God bless the food industry that their tasty artificial flavors!

But Nothing Interesting Ever Happens in Dayton

OK, I can understand someone losing their cool during the heat of a sporting event, but Peoria Chief's pitcher Julio Castillo came completely unglued yesterday in a minor league baseball game in Dayton, Ohio. During a brawl, he wound up throwing a baseball at maximum velocity in the direction of the opposing dugout but ended up hitting a fan. He has been charged with assault. First of all, baseball fights are supposed to be amusing. Usually there's lots of flailing around and roundhouse punches and guys pretending to be held back from the fracas. And there are not supposed to be weapons in baseball. I mean a pitcher would have to be seriously 'roided up, for example, for a pitcher to throw a shorn off bat fragment at a batter. Uh, oh, well ... that almost never happens. My point is that Julio Castillo needs to understand that throwing baseballs at 90 miles an hour into the stands, seriously injuring fans and ending up being charged criminally is not the best road to the big leagues. Let's just hope the fan is not seriously injured. And let's get Julio some anger management. I mean it was the first inning. How angry could anyone be in the first inning?

One of my favorite Walt Frasier moments as a New York Knicks broadcaster was when, after seeing a female fan get struck in the face with a basketball while chatting with a friend (and turned away from the action), Walt said, "that's why I like my women bodacious and not loquacious!" Bottomline: keep your wits about you when you're at a sporting event. You never know when a crazed lunatic will start drilling fans with baseballs.

A Piece of My History Bites the Dust

I learned today while reading Greenwich Village Daily Photo blog that Frankie and Johnnie's steakhouse in Manhattan would be closing at the end of the year. As a kid, I remember my parents bringing us to this wonderful restaurant in the theater district. My family went to dinner there one night before going to see a play sometime in the early 1980s and my father regaled us with stories about how his parents used to visit the place when it was a speak-easy during prohibition. The coolest part about the place was the narrow staircase that led to the second floor diningroom where the door still had a peep-hole used to "screen" guests during earlier times. I was so enamored by the place that after I proposed to my law school girlfriend one New Year's Eve in 1994, we ate dinner and drank champagne at Frankie and Johnnie's. The most memorable part of the meal was the stone-faced waiter. There we were beaming over having just gotten engaged. We were so excited our feet were barely touching the ground. My fiancée, with shiny new diamond on her hand, looked at our server and said, "we just got engaged!" He nodded, did not smile and poured more wine for us.

The imminent closing of Frankie and Johnnie's makes me sad, because that particular place meant something to me. I saw it as a connection to my past and my future. Of course, it is just a restaurant, and like thousands of others that have closed over the years. I remember as a kid wanting to have my parents take me to Luchow's, a German restaurant in Manhattan. My father resisted, however, deciding that Luchow's was a decrepit restaurant (perhaps correctly?) not worth the visit. By contrast, I was fascinated by the idea of visiting a restaurant that had opened in the late 19th century and was still operating almost a century later. When Luchow's closed when I was 14, I remember that it made me truly sad. While my attempts at getting my parents to Luchow's failed, I did wrangle a dinner at Fraunces Tavern down in the financial district -- I think it was for my 12th birthday. I vaguely remember polishing off an enormous steak.

Unlike the closing of Yankee Stadium, which lost its authenticity for me with the 1974-75 renovations, I am sad that Frankie and Johnnie's is closing. While I hope that some New York developers embrace the importance of restraining themselves to preserve some of Manhattan's historic gems, I am realistic. Throughout its history the city of New York has been in a never-ending process of being built up and torn down. Frankie and Johnnies is just the latest casualty -- thanks for the memories.

Let's Raise a Parting Glass

I was sorry to hear about the death of The Golden Girls' Estelle Getty. My ex-wife was a big fan of Golden Girls -- a character flaw that should have been a red flag for me -- so I sat through a few episodes when they were in reruns. Getty was a bright light in an otherwise painful sitcom experience. I remember thinking "Come on, Betty White. You're better than this!" And Bea Arthur? One word: freakish. Anyway, I was shocked to learn during bar trivia a few months back that The Golden Girls is one of the only sitcoms that had all of its stars nominated for Emmy awards. Frankly, I was surprised that they even one nomination. I'm chalking this all up to a problem with demographics (but I never understood The O.C. either). I don't think they were aiming the show at the 18-35 crowd. In a "seeing the man behind the curtain moment," a number of years ago, I was on the backlot tour at Disney Studios in Orlando, and they pointed out the house they used for the exterior shots in The Golden Girls. Realizing that the house on this fake Disney street was just a facade, I thought for a fleeting moment: "Where are those crazy old bats, Dorothy, Blanche, Sophia and Rose living then?" In retrospect, it's probably best they're fictional. Can you imagine living next to that lunatic asylum filled with promiscuous senior citizens? So, I salute Estelle Getty who brought a grandmother to the screen whose acid tongue was only surpassed by my own grandmother, Ella. Maybe they're up in heaven now making wisecracks.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CALLAHAN FAMILY VACATION ON PBASE

I Am a Fashion Vegetarian

Yesterday I heard about a disturbing website called Hats of Meat. Apparently, some guys got together and decided they would make a website about people wearing meat as a hat. People shouldn't wear food. Hats of meat are impractical. And it's dangerous. The PETA people are already going around throwing buckets of paint on people who wear fur. Imagine what they would do if they saw someone approaching them wearing a selection of sliced meats on their head. Furthermore, I take public transportation. I don't want to sit next to someone who's wearing a hat of meat. What's this going to do to the Easter Parade on New York's 5th avenue? Can you imagine ladies in their finery being chased down the street by dogs? This is a terrible idea. Meat is expensive, it attracts insects and would not stand up to the elements. Can you imagine the scene at airport security as people are told to take off their meat hats? Hats of meat in little plastic bins with shoes being x-rayed? This cannot be a good thing. It's all sort of disappointing too. As someone slightly deficient in the hair department, I have longed for the days when men would wear hats again, but hats of meat were not the direction in which I wanted to go at all. I don't even want to go into the theological implications of sharing public spaces with muslims or hindus not keen on the use of pork or beef , respectively, as headwear. Let's just hope this new fashion trend doesn't take off. We couldn't get the young people to pull their pants up. Imagine how much trouble we'll have trying to take their meat hats away from them.

Returning to Skytop, 36 Years Later

I remember doing a family history project in junior year of high school. One of our assignments was to list our family traditions. I found this rather difficult, actually. As I ran through the things we always did at holiday time, for example, I was hard pressed to come up with any traditions -- or at least any that I was anxious to share. I would not share (as a shy sixteen-year-old) Mom and Dad's sipping on champagne (with peaches) as we opened up presents on Christmas morning, for example. One tradition we do have, however, is story telling. One group of stories that seemed to come up regularly involved our family vacations to the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania in the early 1970s. Appropriatelty then, to celebrate Mom and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary, we returned to Skytop Lodge. We spent a wonderful week as a family playing golf, tennis, swimming and enjoying sumptuous meals as a family. It's an effort for me to ever be sincere, but I feel really lucky to be a part of this family. People seem to generally like hanging out with one another. My sixteen year old niece announced after she got home that this was the best vacation she'd ever had. Can't say that I can argue with her.