Neither my brother nor I can recall sitting down to eat meatloaf when we were Brooklyn kids. But we must have, because we share a childhood "meatloaf ghost." "It had something red and burnt on top," he told me on the phone. "But I can't remember anything else about it." That must have been tomato sauce or, more likely, ketchup -- probably Heinz in our conventional household. We have no idea how the ghost's corpse tasted. I wouldn't blame Mom's particular meatloaf for that. No matter how good the food she gave us every single night was, our … [Read more...]
How to Vanquish Costco
I just bought 30 rolls of Scott Tissue for 62 cents apiece, in a bundle the size of a wheelbarrow. Many years ago, when I became fed up, as it were, with eating out every night in order to write restaurant reviews for the Village Voice -- yes, those tribulations of modern life -- I began a column called "Consumerismo" about the history and temptations of shopping. I can't say that the effort was a complete success, but no one at the paper seemed to care what topics I approached, so even a paean to a pair of socks could, and … [Read more...]
Hip! Hip! Yaphank! — or What to Do on Your Weekend Vacation
Most everyone old enough to know who Irving Berlin is knows that "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" was written in 1917 at Camp Upton in Yaphank, Long Island when the composer was called "Sarge." It became part of a musical revue called Yip! Yip! Yaphank! I know it's not Yip, Yip, Yaphank or Yip, Yap Yaphank, both common mistakes, because the New York Times review of its 1918 run at Manhattan's Century Theatre (on the Upper West Side!) spells it with the three exclamations -- way before the decimation of all our copy desks, so it must be … [Read more...]