AKCB: Lame name, awesome blog.

Prior to our near expiration from boredom, Ladybird & I decided to visit our favorite bartender at City Tavern. Unfortunately, he was not behind the bar tonight and we couldn’t find two seats together. At sixes & sevens, we decided to stroll down the way to Lidia’s. Both of us had reservations, as neither she nor I have ever had more than an average meal there, but since were just having a drink & appetizer we decided to chance it.

We walked in and found the bar in total disarray with stools scatter hither & yon and unbussed tables apparently the norm. A bored looking bartender lounged behind the bar chatting up an equally bored looking waiter. I ordered a Negroni. The bartender gave the cocktail shaker the most perfunctory of shakes resulting in an unpleasantly lukewarm cocktail. Ladybird requested a French 75 resulting in a blank stare, so she switched to a Campari & soda. After consulting a menue, we ordered a frico stuffed with sausage & chard and when it arrived it was absolutely delicious. I find most of the food at Lidia’s to be overly seasoned and generally bordering on the salt-lickish, but this was a really good appetizer & there was quite a bit of it (good, since it was 9.95).

After leaving we encountered a group of out-of-towners near City Tavern. They asked us if Lidia’s was nearby. We suggested if the wanted a really good meal and weren’t set on Italian, they should definitely drop Lidia’s and hit the Tavern instead. I hope they had a an awesome meal.

So we did a good deed and will probably go directly to heaven for it, totally erasing any past instances of sodomy, taking Jeebus’s name in vain or coveting my neighbor’s ass from the recordbooks. Hurray.

Ladybird & I saw the Rep’s production of “Gee’s Bend” at Copaken Stage in the P&L tonight. Dreary.

I haven’t seen a show this tedious since the Unicorn’s production of “La Cage aux Folles” last summer. The story of Gee’s Bend, the town, is fascinating. An African-American community in Alabama, it’s citizen played a key role in the civil rights movement. Local authorities terminated ferry service to the community as a punishment for the townspeople marching and registering to vote in nearby Camden. Ferry service remained absent for more than 40 years, isolating the community. The women of the town developed a uniquely beautiful style of quilting that verges on modern art. Their quilts hang in various museums and several important touring shows have been mounted.

But the play blows. The pace is plodding and the characterization weak. It could have benefited from an intermission, mostly so we could have left during it. The set design has has a vague corporate blahness reinforced by the vague corporate blahness of the Copaken Stage itself. The cast seems game enough, but the material & production are so weak they can’t overcome it (except Starla Benford who delights as the quiet matriarchal bedrock of the family). The play wants desperately to deliver a message that has been delivered hundreds of times before and in much stronger works. The struggle for equality, respect and a place in the world should never be this mind-numbing.

Avoid like the plague.

“Life Before Death” is a series of portraits taken of people before and after they died.

Check it out.

I lifted this idea from Logtar.

* Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
* Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
* Post them on your blog for everyone to guess. Fill in the film title once it’s been guessed.

The Rules

* Leave guesses in the comments.
* No Googling or using IMDB search functions. Don’t cheat, suckas!
* Know-it-alls, limit your guesses to three movies. Patterson, this means you.

1. “I promise that my personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair.” (Steel Magnolias, KMC)
2. “Get me a bromide - and put some gin in it!”
3. “You know friend, this is a goddamn bitch of an unsatisfactory situation.” (Brokeback Mountain, Sarah)
4. “Bill’s thirty-two. He looks thirty-two. He looked it five years ago, he’ll look it twenty years from now. I hate men.”
5. “It’s like the time you set that boat on fire and watched those Haitians panic. Oh wait, that was me… The point is, you’re a racist.”
6. “This man out of absolutely nowhere, this man appeared. Heh! So charming. Not really handsome, but… riveting. Yes, that’s the word. I was riveted. I was looking into his eyes, and I found myself thinking thoughts I hadn’t entertained since World War II. I think I actually… blushed.”
7. “AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.” (Jackie Brown, Sarah)
8. “There never was an Aaron, counselor.” (Primal Fear Sarah)
9. “Oh Felicia. Where the fuck are we?” (The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, KMC)
10. “The people of this nation can stomach quite a bit. But the one thing they can’t stomach is the image of a vice president with a mouthful of cock.” (The Contender, Sarah)
11. “Nothing like the first puke of the day. Martini?”
12. “There’s a difference between like and love. Because, I like my Skechers, but I love my Prada backpack.” (10 Things I Hate About You, Cameron)
13. “Oh, it is not. My grandmother had the utmost respect for the Jewish community. When I was a kid she told me to always treat the Jewish kids well, or they’d put the sheeny curse on me.”
14. “Oh, would we visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor? “Oh, are you sure they’re the worst off? I mean, we’ve come all this way. I mean, we don’t want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock.” You know it doesn’t seem right, sitting on the East Side, talking about revolution.”
15. “And so, dear Lord, it is with deep sadness that we turn over to you this young woman, whose dream to ride on a giant swan resulted in her death. Maybe it is your way of telling us… to buy American.”

The Work has been monopolizing a great deal of my time. Between it and the TiVo, I can barely keep ahead. Here’s some shiz I read around the blog-o-sphere over the last few days. Catch you on the flip.

• The aforementioned Libertarians.
• Adjusted douchebaggery: Westport -1, P&L +1.
• Very little good can come from not dropping your gun when the po-po ask you to do so nicely.
• Will these walks include periodic smoke breaks and can I bring along a flask of Woodford Reserve?

Back to your regularly scheduled gin & tonics.

Patterson, The Husband & I attended this evening’s production of “The Little Dog Laughed” at the Unicorn. It’s the story of an up-and-coming Hollywood actor, Mitch Green, and the conflict between his dreams for his career and his love for the male hustler he ordered in one drunken night for a bit of comfort. Donna Thompson turns in a stellar performance as his driven, hilarious agent who finds her own dreams crumbling when Mitch begins to question what he truly wants from life. It’s a great little piece of theater on how our search for love can have unintended consequences, how those closest to us can manipulate us for their own gain and about a betrayal of the love one person feels for another. That’s a lot for a show to tackle and it only one of the four characters ends up getting exactly what he or she wants.

Why is it the feel good show of the season? FULL FRONTAL MALE NUDITY, BABY! Jittles bouncing up-stage right to down-stage left. And these are some serious jittles. Plus, it’s a damn funny show. But mostly there’s jittles. It’s running through the Sunday matinée. Call for tickets if you like nummy boys wearing little or nothing and and a hi-larious Hollywood shark who’s pulling all the strings.

I would consider going, but I don’t like to leave Midtown & Downtown. And I don’t like to cross State Line. Or meet new people. And I doubt I’m missed. And drinking at home is cheaper!

So says an anonymous Star editor in response to my probing and slightly slurred question (i.e. “Is Yael Abouhalkah really the asshole he seems to be?”) at a local bar this evening. I want to believe, despite much evidence to the contrary (I’d link, but just go read some columns or watch an episode of Ruckus). Actually that’s not true; I desperately want to believe the contrary.

He could totally win my heart forev’s by turning swiftly to his right and punching Mike Shanin in the jittles.

On the plus side, I was able to give a heartfelt thanks to the anonymous editor for the Mayor’s Christmas letter on PrimeBuzz. That shit totally keeps on giving.

Kansas and Missouri lawmakers are proposing limiting language on milk bottles. Looks like aggie drug pushers & DFA dairies are afraid small, locally-owned dairies like Shatto are cutting into their piece of the pie. Sadness.

Killer quote: “Some customers, however, don’t trust the FDA and want to avoid milk from hormone-treated animals.”

I can’t imagine from where this lack of trust comes . It’s a puzzle.

I’m a big fan of Shatto products for a couple of reasons, chiefly their glass bottles are returnable for the deposit, so I’m producing less waste and that’s less to carry out on trash day. And I’m really lazy.

• Is 151st & Plowed Ground urban now? Try not building a 6-bedroom house in the middle of a fallow field. Or putting a leash on Spot and walking him around the block (do they have sidewalks and blocks out there?). Or actually stepping out into the back yard with him. Watching the dog take a dump while reflecting on the day can be very relaxing.
• I’ve never met Deb Hipp, but I understand from folks who have had the pleasure, that she packs a phenomenal amount of crazy into a fairly small package. She’s like a dog with a bone over this whole dog park thing. I guess she has the time. Personally I find dog parks to be a nerve-wracking experience. It’s not that I don’t trust my dogs to behave; I do. They’re awesome dogs. It’s just that your dogs suck. They’re aggessive, unsocialized, ill-behaved and generally awful, but it’s not their fault. It’s yours.
• And to round it all out, here’s a Kansas perv sentenced for sex with a dog. Ew.