Dave, I thought you were supposed to be blogger point man? I have to find out about new stuff on
*riothero? What's the scoop on
newsblogger?
Does this constitue a post? I sat next to Drew Barrymore last night (at El Teddy's.) She was drunk. Didn't look anything like her.</gossip>
if in need of a good glass of wine in brooklyn heights go to Tinto @ 60 henry st. lots of good wine by the glass!! food needs to move a notch or two up!! they need a sherry list asap!!
A big chemical company wants to sell you an "all natural"
solution to clean the chemicals off of your produce. I think this is what they mean by "synergy".
Referring to the last paragraph of dratfink's 7/26, gobs of fyre, I'm a prude, I admit it, but even if I weren't wouldn't those be kinda strong words for a bestselling author of adolescent children's books? Ms. Rowling's suggestion that someday Jesus will suck the greasy cock of the devil seems, I don't know, at least a little inappropriate, a little bitter. Did her mum run off with the clergyman and leave her on the steps of the orphanage?
first museam of flourescent
art
Ancient Wine Artifacts on Display at New York Museum
Posted: Thursday, July 27, 2000
By Jacob Gaffney
The Jewish Museum, on Manhattan's Upper East Side, is offering a look at the role of wine in the ancient world. Opening July 30, "Drink and Be Merry: Wine and Beer in Ancient Times" gives visitors a chance to gain insight into winemaking and drinking in early civilizations.
"We wanted to take us into the new millennium with a glass of wine," said Michal Dayagi-Mendels, the curator of the exhibit, which originally opened last summer at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, where she works. "When I first started the exhibition, I knew only white wine, red wine, rosé. But the Talmud talks of 60 different types of wine; Pliny, the Roman historian, mentions 80 types; another writer mentioned 130 types; and so I have learned."
The collection of wine-related artifacts shows that wine served an integral and complicated role in the lives of ancient men and women. The exhibit traces wine from its first appearance, about 8,000 years ago in the mountains of what is now Iran, to iron viticultural tools made in the 6th century B.C.E. (before the Common Era), around the time of the prophet Isaiah, up to Israeli mosaics, from 600 C.E.
A rare find on display is a three-foot-long leather wine flask from the first century, which was used by Jewish rebels fighting Roman occupants. The soldiers would pour the wine from the flask into their drinking water. The alcohol would kill any harmful bacteria in the possibly contaminated water -- making the wine a true lifesaver.
Even one of the Dead Sea scrolls has been rolled out for display, as the ancient Hebrew text describes the proper way to use wine in religious ceremonies.
One would expect to find artifacts such as wineskins used by Jewish rebels and Hebrew scriptures at the Jewish Museum. But what about the guilded silver containers used by the Roman aristocracy or the pottery beer jugs with built-in filters that were placed in the tombs of affluent Egyptians?
"Normally we don't have a statue of Dionysus in the museum," said Susan Braunstein, curator of the Jewish Museum. "But we believe the ancient period is the formative period of Jewish history. This exhibit gives us an opportunity to expand. Obviously, the use of wine is part of that importance."
"Drink and Be Merry" will be shown at the Jewish Museum until Sept. 30. Admission is $8 for adults and $5.50 for students and senior citizens; children under 12 are admitted for free.
# # #
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. (entrance on 92nd Street)
Hours: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, 11 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., Tuesday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed Friday and Saturday.
(212) 423-3200
www.thejewishmuseum.org
As Malaclypse the Younger stated: "Tis an
ill wind that blows no minds." (Yes, that link was basically an excuse to post the aphorism.)
Now that the major party conventions have been reduced to media events, the media are no longer interested. I'm thinking there's a message in there, somewhere. Once upon a time, the three networks all provided gavel-to-gavel coverage, suggesting that these were important events, which everyone
should watch. In fact, they didn't leave you much choice. Old timers wax nostalgic about smoke filled rooms, public floor fights, and the days when things were actually decided at the conventions. Now it's all scripted in advance, and the networks treat the conventions like unpaid advertising, which is pretty much what they are. I guess PBS and cable will give you more coverage, if you really want it, but the Arianna Huffington fronted
Shadow Conventions look to provide a more promising podium.
Having seen the show, let me give a stronger recommendation for Guido Hardt and Arthur Tsay, at 456 Gallery (456 Broadway, south of Grand, 3rd Floor). The show includes Guido's pencil drawings, which seem to elaborate on freeway off ramps, in a style that's somewhere between architectural rendering and calligraphy. One series integrates the structures with landscape settings in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Robert Smithson's work. The main thing, however, is a collaboration with Arthur Tsay, (I guess this is where the Chinese-American connection comes in). His PVC pipe sculpture serves as a speaker cabinet, which is suspended in the middle of the gallery, where it emits the electronic soundtrack for a stunning projection of psychedelic video feedback. It's a cool piece. These guys are definitely working in some areas that should be of interest to readers of these pages. The show is up till August 26; go see it.
From the Kesey archives, here's an
800k .mov file of Neal Cassidy driving the bus and talking the talk.
dave heres the post review of ducasse--New Ducasse Has No Class
NY Post
Steve Cuozzo
July 26, 2000
ALAIN DUCASSE
160 Central Park South
(Essex House)
(212) 247-0300
AFTER two meals at Alain Ducasse, sifting the fine points of a good
tantrum, you start making a list. Exactly what is it about this $200-a-head,
chutzpah-snorting restaurant that makes you boil? Is it that:
* It's the most arrogantly launched eatery in the history of the
world?
* Its $34 pasta appetizer would embarrass the Olive Garden?
* Its hilarious service rituals insult true French professionalism?
None of the above, I decided. What stinks most about this place is
that, like old Vegas high-roller "gourmet" rooms that substituted spectacle
for
substance, it denies money its meaning. Our money, that is, not theirs:
They even tried padding our bill.
"ADNY," as it's stamped with Trumpean pomposity on plates and
silverware, is less about "the world's greatest French chef" than about
franchise
sprawl. Globe-girdling Alain Ducasse means to tap Manhattan's cash
gusher while it lasts, and ADNY is the mediocre, often comical result.
True, Ducasse has dropped his "I am in all my restaurants at once"
act and begun showing his face with a vengeance on Central Park South. You
might even get to meet him in the kitchen, as we did when we spotted him
and conveyed our awe to the staff. But if you want a taste of the real
thing,
stroll down to the Waldorf's Peacock Alley, whose great chef, Laurent
Gras, actually cooked at Ducasse's three-star places in Paris and Monte
Carlo.
Easily America's most expensive restaurant, ADNY has shocked
foodies out of their summer somnelence. They're agog over its $160 prix fixe
menu
and $2 million re-do of the old Les Celebrites. One of its snotty
shticks is to close on Saturday - a practice increasingly rare in Paris -
and serve lunch
only twice a week. It gloats over an alleged 2,700-name waiting list.
All this baloney has had the predictable effect on easily led minds
reduced to aspic by the whisper of Ducasse's name. One normally sane Web
site
proclaims ADNY "America's finest restaurant." Mr. Grimes warns us not to
expect a Times review soon as no tables are available until November. He
might try picking up the phone: The Post got two reservations last week
(one for lunch and one for dinner) just by calling and asking. [See story
next
page.]
ADNY is so full of goofy pageantry, you expect "wine goddesses" to
slide down poles and give neck rubs.
Take the Presentation of Knives. A waiter displays a case made of
rich-smelling leather. It holds a dozen cutting implements of cruel
appearance, in
many sizes and shapes.
The waiter: "It is the knives for the squab. You choose the one for
the bones. "
We choose our weapons. We nervously await a pigeon of prehistoric
dimensions. The squab proves anticlimactically tiny and boneless.
Or take the notorious "courtesy" stools for ladies' purses. These
serve mainly to bring out one's inner klutz, and I tripped over the damn
things twice.
The gimmickry spills over, literally, into "baba au rhum," where
you choose the rum and see it poured, and the wine list whose seal you must
break.
Disappointingly, they were out of the first bottle we selected.
ADNY lays on the laughs early and often. How can you not cackle
over menu language reminiscent of old Chinese restaurants' - pasta "with
tasty
bouillon," berries "with unctuous cake?" Giving you a choice of fancy
pens for check-signing is a side-splitter, when the dough isn't coming out
of your
own pocket.
I drew the line, though, when they tried to charge us $108 for foie
gras served as the chef's-compliments course known as the amuse-bouche. The
puzzling explanation went: "Usually, it is salmon, but one of you
ordered salmon, so we had to do the foie gras, but we took it off." We also
watched a
table-ful of chefs de cuisine from the Four Seasons send back a bill
much too high. The explanation that time? "Wrong table." Whoops.
Despite replacing Les Celebrites' bad art with worse, and
lightening the colors, ADNY still looks like its predecessor: a high,
rectangular rug joint
broken up by two ponderous columns, with rosewood walls, circular
banquettes and miles of gold trim. It's one of the city's most luxurious
spaces and
swell to spend three or four hours in.
The greeting is warm and no one is haughty. But inside, it's a
blizzard of impersonal buzzing, well-meaning but unfocused. ADNY desperately
needs a
ringmaster like Le Cirque's Sirio Maccioni or Le Perigord's Georges
Briquet to lay on the dazzle.
ADNY's floor crew could do with a master of any kind. No one seemed
in charge of the table. One fellow insisted, with Regis' "final answer"
gravity,
that I choose dessert at the exact moment a second man was pouring me
wine to taste. At dinner, we had to ask three times for bread; the tough
mini-baguettes and salty brioches were a letdown after a 40-minute wait.
They're quick to whisk away your napkin when you leave the table,
but need reminding to replace it on your return. Asked to explain the
gynecologically suggestive (and useless) implement supplied with certain
dishes, the best the crew could offer was "asparagus tongs" - although there
was
no asparagus on the table.
"Is the Arizona beef a house specialty?" we wondered. "No." Our man
did not elaborate. What the hell is Arizona beef, which Ducasse calls
"astonishing?"
In fact, his comments on what he's up to in New York sound
patronizing. "What I discover on each of my visits to the United States
gives rise to
much more than simple curiosity," he has said. "In San Francisco, I
tasted the best preserved apricots of my life." Thanks, dude.
ADNY's chef of record is Didier Elena, Ducasse's "accomplice" of 12
years. (Boy, do these guys need a translator.) The place has been open a
month, but they don't seem to have the hang of the fiber optically smart
kitchen, anchored by a 3,000-pound Molteni stove and bristling with gizmos
like
built-in woks that can boil water in 7 seconds.
Lunch (the $160 tasting menu), enjoyable enough, fell shy of
brilliant. Dinner (a la carte) was bad enough to disappoint had it cost $300
for three,
much less $600 - and some dishes were outright debacles.
The menu is middle-of-the-road classic, with a nod to
"Mediterranean" influences and lip service to the Great American Bounty.
Don't expect a
cavalcade of the "luxury" ingredients foie gras, truffles and caviar.
In high summer, most everything had a wintery aspect; even
"tomatoes: a cocktail of tastes" looked dour on the plate. Some sauces were
acidically
harsh, others lacked their alleged themes and oversalting was rampant.
Two "signature" dishes, lifted from Ducasse's places in Paris and
Monte Carlo, were remarkably dull. Indifferent breading was no help to
spongy, $74
veal sweetbreads in their own juice. Worse, spaghettini "al dente" ($34)
with olive oil and sauteed vegetables - a sticky lump in a small bowl - was
as
congealed as bad Chinese takeout, drenched in a puddle of "crushed black
truffles" oddly without taste.
Far better was "delicate velouté of sweet peas, their pods and
radish greens," poured at the table, with two breaded crab fingers. But $28
for pea
soup?
Santa Barbara spotted prawns "in a chaud-froid, citrus fondue"
($42) were plump, sweet and nicely aspic-glazed - but near-inedible citric
ooze stole
over the dish like a plague. So did shrill "peppered vinegars reduction"
encircling "wild" salmon ($62) that was both mealy and bland.
The best a la carte dish was seaweed-steamed halibut filet ($68), a
firm slab atop lovely green herb sauce and accessorized with "sea urchin
cappuccino" and Asian-scented greens.
The tasting menu at lunch, when there were empty tables, showed
signs of life. That tomato "cocktail" came with marvelous tomato sorbet that
reminds you it is, after all, a fruit.
Promiscuous laying-on of butter bailed out a blurry swirl of
farfalle with ham and vegetables. Filet of sole, in the shape of a tube,
might have been a
tube of butter, so drenched was the fish - but it afforded pleasure with
cranberry beans and delectable crawfish.
Best was the squab - a pristine sliver that was simplicity itself.
It was topped with "thighs in pastilla," an earthy game-and-spice mix in a
cigarette-shaped phyllo crust of Moroccan inspiration, and black
truffle-foie gras red wine reduction that, for once, delivered the goods.
Camembert was chilled enough to have been refrigerated. Pastry
director Frederic Robert's desserts ($22), like a warm glazed feuillantine
served with
almond ice cream atop apricot compote, were winners. A trolley laid on
fun goodies like lollipops and cookies that took forever to be served.
Once during lunch, I remarked to my colleague on how late it was
getting.
"You can't rush mediocrity," he observed.
Maybe not, but they sure could discount it 40 percent. Thanks to
ADNY, everyone else can raise their entree prices $10 and boast, "See how
much
cheaper we are than Ducasse?"
an email i received today from my friend bowman:
from the desk of Bowman H,
wordsmith, rapper, ideationist, on-line movie review reviewer,
ghostwriter, dog artist assistant, navy seal trainer, cheese lover,
PERFORMANCE ARTIST:
Just wanted to let you know that I will be participating in a large scale
art event this week, ThursdaySunday at Judson House in New York City. It is
a celebration of the history and legacy of Judson House, which is scheduled
to be demolished in August. I will be part of a performance installation
coordinated by Diane Dwyer.
Details about the event appear in the official press release, pasted
below. For more information, see the website
www.members.tripod/peculiarworks
Hope to see you there.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Karen Greco
(212) 695-7400
PECULIAR WORKS PROJECT
Presents
THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT
A Celebration of the History and Legacy of Judson House
Before the Wrecking Ball Strikes!
Four Days Only! Thursday, July 27 - Sunday, July 30!
New York, New York June 26, 2000 - Peculiar Works Project presents
THEJUDSON HOUSE PROJECT, a celebration of the history and legacy of Judson
House, for one weekend only, Thursday, July 27 - Sunday, July 30. Judson
House is located at 237 Thompson Street (at the corner of West 3rd Street).
Tours begin every half-hour, from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM (for a total of 7 tours
per evening). Tours run approximately 90 minutes each. Tickets are $15.
Reservations are required for the tour and can be made by calling (212)
529-3626 ext. 4. Throughout its history, Judson Church has been a breeding
ground for social and cultural action. Since the turn of the 19th Century,
they have sponsored a number of health and social service organizations, all
of which have been based in Judson House. In the late 1950s, Judson House
expanded its community services to include providing a home for experimental
artists of all disciplines. The first site of the New York City "Happenings"
of the 1960s, its ground-breaking Judson Gallery, Dance Theatre and Poet's
Theatre were an integral part of the early Off Off Broadway contemporary
dance and performance art movements. Avant-garde legends such as Claes
Oldenberg, Yoko Ono, Carolee Schneemann, Yvonne Ranier, Trisha Brown, Robert
Rauschenberg,
and Maria Irene Fornes worked or lived at Judson House. In 1999, Judson
Memorial Church made the difficult decision to sell this historic house to
New York University. The building is scheduled for demolition in August.
Peculiar Works Project, the brainchild behind Big Art in Small Spaces, is
honoring this legendary mecca for avant- artists with THE JUDSON HOUSE
PROJECT, a multi-disciplinary art and performance event. Consisting of nine
performance and installation works in different spaces throughout Judson
House, the audience is taken on a tour throughout the installations, with
linking vignettes between each piece. Commissioning new artists from the
fields of theater, dance, performance and installation art, THE JUDSON HOUSE
PROJECT creates contemporary responses to the heritage of Judson and the
groundbreaking work that took place there. The themes encompass references
to Judson artists and their work as well as reflections on the social and
political history of Judson House. The Sunday evening performance will be
followed by a blowout party, appropriately called "The Wrecking Ball."
The artists who will be participating in this one-time-only event are: Chris
Burney; Laurel Jay Carpenter; Yanira Castro; Nancy S. Chu; S.M. Dale; Steven
Dean; Diane Dwyer; Funkopolis (Tim Brown, Shannon Maddox and Gabriel
Shanks); and Renee Philippi.
Peculiar Works Project, now in its seventh season, generates original
performance that is accessible and fun for a diverse audience. Challenging
the conventions of medium, structure and process in an alternative theatre
context, Peculiar Works Project encourages collaboration, experimentation
and a rebel spirit in emerging artists by providing them with the tools and
opportunities necessary to grow throughout the creative process. Performing
in non-traditional spaces, they have taken their work directly into NYC
communities by presenting site-specific productions in landmark buildings,
gutted storefronts and other peculiar sites in the Village, Soho, TriBeCa,
the Lower East Side and, most recently, cyber-space. They have presented
projects in conjunction with the Lincoln Center Theater Directors' Lab,
Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre, HERE, Dixon Place, Judson Church, Nada,
Downtown Arts Festival, CHARAS/El Bohio Cultural and Community Center,
Greenwich House Music School and The Culture Project, among others.
THE JUDSON HOUSE PROJECT is funded in part with public funds from the New
York State Council on the arts, and with private funds from The Peg
Santvoord Foundation; The Nancy Quinn Fund for Emerging Theatres; and The
Katherine Dalglish Foundation.
thought i would create a page to focus on art and art related issues. all posts and comments are encouraged.
Our friend Guido Hardt has an art opening tomorrow (Thursday, 7/27, 6-8) at 456 Broadway, near Grand. Two person show. Don't ask me why a German named Guido is showing at the Chinese-American Gallery, it's multiculturalism, ok? He does interesting work out of architectural motifs and aerial views. Worth checking out, even if you can't make the opening.
jim are you and dave and alex in this??-----
net.people: The Personalities and Passions Behind the Web Sites
by Thomas E. Bleier, Eric C. Steinert
Paperback - 320 pages (May 2000)
CyberAge Books; ISBN: 0910965374 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.70 x 9.95 x 7.97
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 43,317----or do i have to wait for net.people 2
