Monthly Archives: August 2013

My B.Y.O.B.: Bring Your Own Brine

08 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Confessional, Food

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Brine

I’m big on brine.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

The younger me has memories of dining with my mom at a restaurant, and her dipping into her purse and spreading two or three Sweet’N Lows on the table for her coffee or tea – just in case the restaurant didn’t carry it. And then there was Mrs. W., who would stealthily drizzle her tupperwared low-cal salad dressing, brought from home, on her salads at the diner. And who among us hasn’t known someone who would order a cup of hot water, and then soak a home-brought tea bag in it?

All behavior that mortified me. How uncouth! Beyond rude! Unladylike!

I’m now them. I would never tote a sweetener, a dressing, nor a tea bag. Never. But when it comes to my dirty martini – after years of imbibing many that are not green enough – I’m considering stashing a bottle of olive brine in my bag, and bringing it to the bar.

Unlike my predecessors in gaucheness, though, this is not about my health, or frugality. It is all about sniff, sip, swallow … and salt. You may recall, that for me, it’s that first mouthing of a martini that counts the most, and can make or break the drink. It’s crucial that, “the lips greet the glass with precognitive delight.” And I need to assure that, “that premiere swig” will “always deliver.” Lately, I’ve come to have too many “first swigs” that don’t “deliver.”

If I sip, and my teeth clench, or if my tongue recedes, or worse – if I sip, shiver and shudder – that means the balance of vodka to brine is off-kilter. Sometimes I just suck it up and begrudgingly drink it anyway. Especially when the barkeep smiles proudly, upon delivery, at his or her perceived success at delivering my requested, “filthy, extra-extra-dirty” martini.

But I’ve decided that I can’t take it anymore. What it’s come down to, is me, with a galvanized stare (not unlike a mother teaching a child), explaining to the uninitiated bartender that, “I like it dirtier than most – like the Hudson River.” It borders on begging. Some get it; most don’t.

So, I’ve begun to take back my martini. I will now meekly (always with an apologetic smile), push my glass away from me, and back towards the bartender, with an Oliver Twist(y), “Please sir, I want some more.” Brine, that is.

To which I’ve been admonished (usually with an astonished smile):

“Ew.”
“This drink is a travesty.”
“Why bother with the vodka?”
“Let me see your ankles – they must be swollen.”
“You took the last of it – and you need more?”

But I’ve only taken one personally:

“Why don’t you just bring a bottle of brine with you, and drink that?”

OK, I will. In the tradition of my mom, Mrs. W., and all the tea-bag toters, I guess the older me has earned the right to have it right. The next step is to bring the brine.

So, I’m imagining once I find a travel-size bottle of brine (maybe I should just tupperware-it?), that I will then begin to send back those puny, pea-sized olives that often garnish martinis these days, and ask that my drink be properly topped with big, fat, juicy (bleu-cheese, please!) robin-egg-sized olives. Or I’ll bring my own.

Hey TSA: Don’t ‘Wave Me Up, Pat Me Down

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Opinion, Travel

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Scanned

Scanned at the airport.

BY JULIE SEYLER

It is standard fare: the excitement of a flight-based vacation tempered by the prospect of wending one’s way through the layers of security imposed by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Actually, dealing with security issues begins at home, when we have to remember to not inadvertently pack that new 6.5 ounce tube of toothpaste in the carry-on bag, and ends when we remove our footwear so that we can stroll through the device that detects gadgets hidden in the nether regions of the body. It is unpleasant, but necessary, given the harsh and horrible reality that there are people out there bent on designing ways to blow up airplanes.

For years we have been walking through machines that detect only metal objects. But because they were ineffective against plastic, gels, ceramics and other solids, new technology arose in the form of whole-body scanners. Setting aside issues of privacy (and there are many), these machines pictorially undress you and scan and scope the body for everything. After the hue and cry that the government was deploying radiation in the name of security, and simultaneously increasing every traveler’s chance of cancer by so many leaps and bounds, we are now subjected to scans that operate on millimeter wave technology. According to the TSA and various other Web sites, millimeter wave technology is perfectly safe because it does not use ionizing radiation to zap you.

I did not know all this when I went to Puerto Rico in March 2013 with a friend for a 4-day trip, but I knew the basic ritual. I was directed towards the body scanner, or as I prefer to call it, the ‘Wave Machine. It looks like a silver cylinder pod, somewhat reminiscent of the transformer from Star Trek. At the time, I had heard vague buzz that these scanners were not so safe, but the TSA guard pooh-poohed me. She explained the machine operates on microwaves, not Xrays. No fear of being irradiated in the name of safety.

I waltzed into the pod, held my hands up, was microwaved, and cleared security. I met my girlfriend on the other side. She said she would never go through one of them, and had opted for the pat down.

I said, “Why? I was just assured how safe they were.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Hah!”

Fast forward five months, and I am back in an airport having to go through security. I see the ‘Wave Machine, and I see the standard issue metal detector, and recalling my girlfriend’s, “Hah!” I proceed to walk through the metal detector. I am immediately halted by the TSA guard.

“You cannot use this machine. You need to use that machine.” He pointed to the ‘Wave.

“But I do not want to go through the ‘Wave Machine.”

“Well, then you have to get patted down.”

“Fine.”

“You might have to wait.”

“Fine.”

So as I am waiting, I see a woman sail through the metal detector. I figure the TSA guy must have made a mistake, so I try to walk through again. And again I am halted.

“How come she gets to go through?”

“She has a child.”

“So what!”

“Only adults with children, and employees, are allowed to use these machines.”

“Whoa, you have got to be kidding me!”

“No. Those are the rules.”

Hmmm. Is the TSA practicing a little unequal protection on the bodily harm spectrum? Even though the online literature repeatedly states that non-ionizing radiation is perfectly safe, does the TSA know something else? Has it perhaps determined that the organs and tissues of little lads and lasses, as well as employees of the TSA, are too delicate and vulnerable to be microwaved, but the rest of us wear invisible armor that protects against the assault of the people scanner?

I would love to see the risk assessment memos on this issue, penned by the lawyers and actuaries: Please analyze the monetary damages if a six year old successfully sues for wave damage vs. what would be incurred if a 60 year old sued.

The mere fact is that it would be so much more difficult to establish the link, so cause and effect on someone who has lived beyond 18 must have made it a no-brainer for the TSA to institute this policy. Or am I merely a right-side-of-50 cynic?

Fifteen minutes later the pat-down lady showed up. And on I went through security.

Herman Hupfeld: A Jersey Boy From a Time Gone By

06 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Concepts, Men

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Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

Herman Hupfeld will never be forgotten.

By FRANK TERRANELLA

It’s one of the most famous songs ever written because it is the centerpiece of one of the most famous movies ever made. But its author is largely unknown – the answer to a trivia question. The movie is “Casablanca,” and the song is, “As Time Goes By.”  But who wrote it?

Earlier this year I attended a screening of “Casablanca” at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra providing the music. Max Steiner’s classic score never sounded better. But Max didn’t write the song that people remember most from “Casablanca” – the song that Ilsa asks Sam to play again. Max Steiner, for all his musical genius, did not write “As Time Goes By.” A man by the name of Herman Hupfeld did that.

Who, you may well ask, was Herman Hupfeld? He was the son of a church organist in Montclair, New Jersey. He began his career in 1912 singing his own songs in Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic. This was the after-hours entertainment that Florenz Zeigfeld staged after the Zeigfeld Follies on the roof of the New Amsterdam Theatre on 42nd Street. Hupfeld went on to serve in World War I as a saxophonist in the United States Navy Band. In the 1920s, he wrote songs for various Broadway shows. He was the “go-to-guy” for what they called “additional material.”

In 1931, Hupfeld provided additional material for a musical called “Everybody’s Welcome.” The show had a book by Lambert Carroll, lyrics by Irving Kahal, and music by Sammy Fain. Fain and Kahal wrote, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella,” and Fain went on to write, “Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.” But “Everybody’s Welcome” did not produce a hit for the duo. The hit of that show, which ran for 139 performances, was the additional material provided by Herman Hupfeld – “As Time Goes By.” Rudy Vallee had a successful recording of it.

Fast forward to 1942, and Hal Wallis is producing a movie inspired by the 1938 Charles Boyer, hit “Algiers.”  It’s based on an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison called, “Everyone Comes to Rick’s.” The screenplay adaptation by Julius and Philip Epstein has as a key plot-point, a song played by Sam, Rick’s pal and piano player, that used to be Rick and Ilsa’s favorite when they were in Paris together before World War II. Max Steiner tells Wallis that he would write a song for the movie. But Wallis feels that the song should be something old and familiar, a song that Sam actually would have played in the late ‘30s. The choice was Hupfeld’s, “As Time Goes By.” And the rest is history.

While the song became world-famous, Hupfeld remained in near obscurity at his home at 259 Park Street in Montclair, a short walk from the Watchung Avenue train station. Reports say that he rarely left his hometown. He wrote many other songs with titles such as “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba On the Tuba,” A Hut in Hoboken,” and “Let’s Put Out The Lights (And Go To Sleep).” He died in 1951 at the age of 57. He’s buried in the Mount Hebron Cemetery in Montclair.

While few people remember Herman Hupfeld, his creation lives on in film history. It’s safe to say that a century after his death, people will still be echoing Ilsa’s request, “Play it Sam. Play,`As Time Goes By.’”

Weiner’s Inflated Head …

05 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by in Men, Opinion

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The Weiner: 2 red onions and a scallion

The Weiner: 2 red onions and a scallion.

BY BOB SMITH

Weiner’s Lead Shrinks
Weiner Sticks It Out
Weiner Won’t Withdraw
Weiner Takes A Hard Line
Weiner Comes On Strong
Weiner Whacked In Latest Poll

Enough already. The New York Post pun-headline writers are in hog heaven with this one. Even his wife’s name plays into it – oh I know, she uses Huma (“hoo-ma”) Abedin, her maiden name. Why? Probably to avoid any snickering over the potential oral sex allusion if her name were Huma (as in “hum-a”) Weiner.

There he stands wiry and intensely defiant; a cornered raging rodent, proclaiming his staunch intention to keep plugging away (sorry) in his race for mayor of New York. There’s Huma, sincere and wide-eyed; the bright trustworthy Good Wife standing by her flawed yet human man. It’s all a bit strained, isn’t it?

Let’s be real. If it had been splashed all over every newspaper and other news media outlet in the country that I had been sending flaming erotic messages to a woman half my age and engaging in lurid masturbatory phone sex with her multiple times a day, and that I had done it all under the ludicrous nom de guerre “Carlos Danger,” I would be so deeply ashamed of my transgressions against my wife, my family, and common morality that I would probably never show my face in public again.

Not so Mr. Weiner. He holds a press conference, hiding behind the usual “I’m a flawed person” mea culpas so popular among public figures these days who get caught, literally, with their shorts around their ankles. He has no shame, and for him I suppose that’s good. He can walk down the street with his head held high, apparently secure in the knowledge that at least he thinks he’s perfectly fine.

But the rest of us don’t have to live in his world. In our world, what he has done reveals a shocking, pitiful depth of self-absorption and, worse yet, an utter disregard for others: his wife, his infant son (who someday will read all about it), the woman (women) he has playfully ravaged electronically from afar and regaled with photos of his genitalia; and of course, the voters he expects to believe his hollow protestations of having changed his wayward ways. These character flaws, or obsessions, or whatever they’re called, don’t seem compatible with the energy, dedication, and focus that would be needed to effectively lead one of the biggest cities in the world.

Remember the tongue in cheek Peter Principle, from the late ’60s? The premise was that in a system where an individual’s advancement is based on achievement and/or merit, the person will eventually be promoted beyond his or her level of ability. Each person, they said, would eventually work his or her way up to their level of incompetence and then stay there. Think Dilbert and all his coworkers.

Anthony Wiener has found that plateau. There’s no need to promote him any further. He’s apparently very good at indulging his erotic/narcissistic fantasies, and at stroking (again, my apologies) his apparently boundless ego. Let’s not risk a painful and embarrassing demonstration of the Wiener Principle by allowing him to continue doing so from Gracie Mansion.

It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, and I (Don’t) Like It

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Confessional

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the fountain of music copy

BY JULIE SEYLER

When Mick Jagger turned 70 on July 26, it seemed the entire population on the right side of 50 screamed, “Happy Birthday!” In unison. The “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” remains a compact, sexy ball of youth.

But not only were we toasting him, somehow it became about us. If he is living proof that playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band de-fertilizes the creeping, creepy vine called “Age,” we post-50-year-olds are a testament that being faithful listeners to rock ‘n’ roll keeps us springy in spine, and open in outlook. The message came over loud and clear to my high school class, or at least to those of us who are planning to attend the party commemorating our departure 40 years ago from the hallowed home of the Spartans.

The reunion e-mail chain erupted with anecdotes about the healing and restorative power of rock ‘n’ roll, and the days when it ruled our lives. One women recalled that after seeing Black Sabbath at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, she had no choice but to bring her favorite Black Sabbath record into typing class. Without a whimper from the teacher, it seems the class learned the keyboard listening to “Fairies Wear Boots.” The advice was non-negotiable: revisit the musical landscape of the 1970s, or be doomed to overripe maturity!

I felt despair. I never really cottoned to rock ‘n’ roll. Perhaps my downfall was not taking that typing class. I figured I was about 99 years old on the chronological youth chart. I did not even have one good rock concert up my sleeve. While everyone else was (and still is) drinking from the bottomless pit of the greatest guitar hits of 1973, all I have to rely on are memories of endless hours listening to Billie Holiday sing Gershwin tunes.

I was lamenting my old age dilemma to my friend Lucy “Jagger,” who happens to be on the right side of 60.

She said, “Fear not my friend. I can help you rehash some of the greatest moments in musical history, and thereby start you on the path to reach the fountain of youth.”

She promised me I could borrow her greatest rock ‘n’ roll moments if I promised to watch only Mick Jagger videos on YouTube, and give up Richard Burton. Only kidding. She adores Richard Burton as much as I do, but would never be caught watching a YouTube video. But she did treat me to the vicarious thrill of her:

• Watching Jimi Hendrix play guitar at a Syracuse University frat party circa 1966-67.
• Attending the concert where Bob Dylan played electric guitar for the first time.
• Screaming her head off at the 1965 Beatles’ concert in Shea Stadium.
• Showing up at practically every single Rolling Stones concert that hit the United States in the ’60s.

As a cribber of Lucy’s tales of rock ‘n’ roll, I felt younger already. Whew!

Gone Fishing. Caught by a Nun

01 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Men

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Nun

Art by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

Late summer nights in the late ’60s would find me and my brother, Jim, crawling around in our friend’s backyard, groping for nightcrawlers. It wasn’t just for the fun of it – they were destined to be trout bait. Our favorite fishing hole was a pond bursting with rainbow trout about a mile from our house, buried in the woods behind a private Catholic girls’ school in Alpine, New Jersey.

We would sneak out of bed, get to the pond by 5:30 a.m., and start fishing in the dark. Once the first slice of dawn seared the horizon, the trout began to feed and the bite was on. Mr. Durkin, the resident groundskeeper, lived in a small house on the far side of the pond. If he saw us fishing, he would yell from across the pond, or jump in his truck, and drive over to chase us away. Either way, with Durkin, we always escaped. Maybe he meant it that way.

But the nuns were a different story. The school was run by strict nuns who wore traditional black habits with headpieces and tight white wimples – like facial spats – covering their cheeks and throats. They didn’t drive or yell or make any noise at all – they walked peacefully along the road, approaching in total silence. They were easy to miss. If you didn’t look up often enough to check the road, one of those holy zombies could sneak right up on you.

“Penguin at two o’clock,” Jimmy whispered urgently, reeling in his line so fast his worm periodically launched out of the water.

Sure enough, there was a nun, waddling slowly toward us on the dirt road that ran along the right side of the pond. Her hands were clasped under her belly, where an oversized wooden cross gently swayed and bounced with each measured stride. She was at least 75 yards away – an easy exit. I nervously reeled in my line, while Jimmy jammed the knife and other gear into the tackle box, snapping it shut.

“Move yer ass, here she comes!” he yelled, laughing nervously, and stumbling as he started to run. With a hooked nightcrawler dangling madly at the end of my pole, I grabbed the bait can and followed Jimmy, our feet thudding like gunshots on the rickety wooden dock.

The nun called out in her stern schoolteacher’s voice. “Stop you boys! Stop right there!” She had turned the corner of the pond, and was now only 20 yards away.

Why didn’t they ever run? Was it the clunky shoes? Or was running sinful somehow? Whatever the reason, we easily got away, whooping as we plunged down the steep dirt path into the woods on the far side of the road, our hearts hammering and rocks and dirt skittering around our ankles.

But not always. It was a glorious summer morning twenty minutes after dawn. A fat rainbow trout exploded to the surface and grabbed Jimmy’s bait, then darted away, tugging frantically as it knifed through the water in quicksilver flashes. It dove again, taking out line, then doubled back to leap in a graceful arc above the surface, scattering jeweled droplets as it shook its head from side to side, trying to throw the hook.

Within a half hour, we had two fat fish on the dock, and had lost four more to broken lines or thrown hooks. Rainbow trout are beautiful. Black freckly spots cover their back and fins, and a pink sorbet stripe runs in a festive banner from gills to tail. After they’re dead a while, the colors start to fade, and ours were looking that way now. The bite was slowing down anyway, so we decided it was time to go.

And there, at the end of the dock, stood a stern-faced nun.

“You aren’t supposed to fish here, you know,” she said, pursing her lips in disapproval. We’d been caught by the nun Gestapo!

“What are your names?” she commanded. We answered sheephishly; automatically.

“Jim Smith.”

“Bob Smith.”

She jerked her neck, peckish, and fixed us with a solemn squint.
“Lying is a grave sin.”

We shrugged. How could you prove your identity at age 14 – show your ninth grade report card?

“Now get out of here and don’t come back.” We started to gather our things. “And throw those fish back in the water.”

They’d been lying motionless on the dock for a half hour. Jimmy picked one up by the tail and cradled its head with his other hand, bobbing it in the water to move fluid over the gills as if to coax it to life. We both knew it was a hopeless gesture, but the nun needed to understand.

“See, sister? They’re dead. There’s no point,” he pleaded.

Like a startled turtle, she withdrew a bit back into her wimple, making the doughy skin squish further out around the edges. Her pale eyes were watery, but unwavering. She shook her head. We picked up both fish – dead, and still as stones. The pond looked opaque; a crystal carpet dancing in the brilliant sun. We gently slid them below the surface and they quickly disappeared into the cool blackness. They wouldn’t float until later when they started to rot. By the time they rose to the surface they would be ghastly caricatures of rainbow trout – white-eyed, bloated and frayed, with all their colors drained to gray.

We gathered our things and glumly trudged down the path into the half-shadows of the woods, heading home. We stopped briefly to dump out our leftover nightcrawlers among the weeds by the stream. Most would get eaten by birds before they could dig in. But at least they had a chance.