My decades-long food colleague and friend Daniel Young, who lives in London and does many things, including posting on substack about past and present hungers, asked me if I knew of an old egg store on East 7th Street between Second and First avenues in the East Village, Manhattan, the same block where another Daniel and I live in a tenement built in 1893. The egg store is in a 1984 film by Paul Mazursky, Moscow on the Hudson, London Daniel emailed. Russian-circus saxophonist Robin Williams, who defected while his troupe negotiated a final, … [Read more...]
Born to Pasta
I've been absent and errant, for many reasons, but global tumult has sifted through everything I am. The other day, I admitted to a friend who masters a special bookshop -- which, if forever ambered, could be an Ashurbanipal or Alexandria for our rickety future -- that my daily reliance on cooking as thinking, hand-ballet, and even small achievement was waning, and I wanted to end my relationship. He stopped, struck. As we spoke, he had been sorting books and ephemera in his store's exploded back room. I already knew that New York City … [Read more...]
What a Stranger in the Family Ate
Nothing goes without saying, and I have said and written many times that my father, Harry Weinstein, was crucial to my cooking and eating life. If you have browsed this blog over the last decade you might recall his salami and eggs, or my watching him delicately prize open and slide down steamers in the clam bar at Brooklyn's long-gone shore-stadium, Lundy's. He took his food seriously, with concentration I've rarely seen elsewhere. To be sure, my mother, Edythe, cooked more food for us than Harry did: it was her task and responsibility, … [Read more...]
Nunzio
My grandfather had a baby brother named Nunzio. I could post a photo of him in his 90s, dazed expression, full head of cropped white hair, but I don't have permission to use it. "Nunzio" sounds sexy, no? nOON-zee-oh, not mechanical, like TAHJH-e-oh, although Rufus -- his Canadian name has a "woof" -- made his "Grey Gardens" sung Tadzio warm and confectionary, a wistful vanilla-cream. I can see my mouth opening to say "Nunzio" for the first time. Did I do it right? Nunzio Ciraldo was born in the same Sicilian village, Bronte, as his … [Read more...]
Type? Writer.
The lede reads: "Daniel hoped he hadn't made a big mistake. It was a birth day present coming fr om Europe. Shipping was a big part of the price." I'm copying from the page above, so it's all [sic]. The package arrived from the U.K. weeks before my Virgo birthday. " 'What if you don't like it?' I got nervous, but he said he could send it back." Sure, I could retype the whole first page I wrote on my gift on my MacBook, or scan and copy a doc that would come close. But any accuracy would be challenged by age: mine and the fractured … [Read more...]
Queer Cutlets at Judy’s Cafe
Stuck like a plum in a pound cake for a decade at the Philadelphia Inquirer, I wondered where to eat. Of course I cooked or defrosted and was lucky to have the progenitor of Whole Foods, Austin, Texas' Fresh Fields, walking distance from both my desk and apartment -- I lived right across the street from Walter Annenberg's Inquirer castle, a footstep commute. The Rodin Museum was a few blocks away, but you can't eat marble. Most of my colleagues had homes in the suburbs, so I rarely got invited. I didn't understand why they were there, … [Read more...]
Bent, or Give That Boy a Hand
Didn't notice until I pressed flat on a table and wondered if that hand were mine. Right index finger flirts into its taller, straight neighbor. What caused this? All my fingers hurt, especially when I pretend to play Bach or Scarlatti on my desk, a constant teen, not knowing a thing about real or phantom musical keyboards. My hands are so tiny I wear only "women's" gloves, which has given this queer cis male a slip-on drag pleasure. I hope anyone out there finds something they like that hugs like skin, even over mottled, wrinkled … [Read more...]
Nobel Prize: Sweet!
There's no Nobel for candy, hard or soft, which is too bad. It could bring peace, by pieces. That prize is an elite exercise, yet, as a teen science nerd, I shivered when introduced to one and then another Nobel winner, gracious, patient elders with remarkable Erlenmeyer memories. Lucky in Manhattan to have a Japanese market nearby, and because I'm enticed by anything in a post-Pop package, I fell for Nobel's Super Cola, three ounces for $3, a dozen or so globes of hot surprise. I told myself that I sprung for my candyphile boyfriend, but … [Read more...]
Clarion
Someone's calling, maybe me. C. C sharp? D? My scalp tightens, which makes me wonder where I am, and who, too. I've had this reaction before when I've been offered rare sounds from the past, oddly recorded. An incinerated Pompeii on TV in which fictional lava held screams of the dying. The first recorded song, "Au clair de la lune," using soot, in French. I've written about these in 2008. Some would have every reason to think that whatever of my own voice I may have recorded, tremulous and needy, would be a sonic fossil, too. But … [Read more...]
An -ing Life
No photo now, or photos. Not of November's election's "Dancing in the Streets": one of my favorites by Martha & the Vandellas, to which we lifted our swaying arms when wracked and strafed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were finally left to themselves by our wretched and vicious government, like government now. I danced to this in my 20s with another mobile Martha, an already furious artist, and with Melvyn, a burning writer who wooed me to join him in his trade, my dear, persistent friend. It was 1970s San Diego. The only big gay bar was … [Read more...]