The Fantom Photo Album – II

Continuing the theme of cameraless photography, here are a couple more photographs that only exist in my head.

1) A 30-something, slightly overweight woman is sitting alone at a table, right next to the window of a restaurant. Her food, I think it was a plate of pasta, was just placed on the table by the server. For a split second he face was lit up by an very peculiar expression. It’s somewhat hard to describe, although it would have been plain as day on a photograph. Yes, the woman know that her problems are not going to go away, and in fact that plate of rich food will fill her with guilt afterward. But meanwhile, for a short period of time, although it’s a very bad substitute for happiness, it will have to do. Yep, it will have to do.

2) A big burly construction worker, all sweaty and unshaven, in his work pants, dirty shirt and Timberlands that have seen a few construction sites. On his head sits a hardhat decorated with two decals. They are elegant white Apple stickers, the kind that geeks like to put on Wintel boxes.

Double Sikrit Krabby Patty

Bubblebass: I’ll take a double triple bossy deluxe on a raft, 4×4 animal style, extra shingles with a shimmy and a squeeze, light axle grease, make it cry, burn it and let it swim.
Squidward: We serve food here, Sir!

I only understood the reference in this Sopngebob quote after learning about the In-N-Out Burger “secret menu” (thanks for the link, g60). Apparently this west coast burger chain has a special, unwritten menu that includes things like “Flying Dutchman” (two meat patties, two slices of melted cheese and nothing else), x by y (where x is the number of meat patties and y is the number of cheese slices), and the fabled “Animal Style” – which involves frying the mustard into the patties and extra pickles and grilled onions.

The rumor has it that someone actually managed to order 100×100 and even 500×500. This site has a picture of Animal Style buger and the cash register with the item in question rung up. Every food place needs to have a secret menu.

I Don’t Know if this Qualifies as a Mitzvah

I am a big fan of a NBC’s failed TV show “The Restaurant“. If you remember, in the promotional clip Rocco says that 90% of restaurants fail in the first year. The author of this article claims that “the ridiculous myth about excessive restaurant failure rates is once again perpetuated and moves from industry scuttlebutt to everyday knowledge.” I don’t know the numbers seem about right to me – Rocco’s is out of business, right? I am just glad that I actually managed to go there once, eat lukewarm Italian food and have my picture taken with Rocco’s Mama.

So, what happens with all the cups, plates and flatware from all the failed restaurants? Well, partially it’s bought by resellers, such as a wonderful little store located right at the beginning of Silicon Alley in Manhattan. It’s called Fishs Eddy and it sells a wide array of used commercial plates and flatware. For instance, have you ever wanted to steal a nice fork from an airplane? Well, Fishs Eddy sells airline flatware.

They also sell some one of a kind items that seem to be specifically manufactured as novelties. Take these “Heroes of the Torah” tumblers:

They seem to be made as a follow-up to a movie called Keeping the Faith, a story about a priest and a rabbi who traded “Heroes of the Torah” trading cards when they were children.

There are of course no “Hero of the Torah” trading cards. That’s right, in real world they are called “Torah Personalities” cards. These were made in the late eighties-early nineties, and might still be manufactured. I dug up an image on eBay:

There’s also a version called “Torah Link” that is available from torahtots.com.

Ach, Mate, Say “Australian for Beer”. Please?

I have a friend who married a Scot and moved away to Scotland. In fact marrying men from exotic locales seems to be a trend amongst my female Russian friends – another one married an Australian.

It’s almost ironic that my favorite bar in New York is a Scottish bar called St. Andrews (which is also a place in Scotland where my friend used to live). St. Andrews the bar is characterized by an amazing selection of whisky, good atmosphere, good food (there’s a restaurant in the back), moderate prices and friendly kilt-wearing waiters with Scottish accents.

Recently I braced myself and ordered haggis. It’s a widely known “scary” dish which is a sausage made out of various organ meats. It is served with obscene sounding “neeps and tatties” (mashed turnips and potatoes).

At St. Andrews it was served the following way : a layer of the abovementioned “neeps and tatties”, then a layer of contents of haggis sausage (which is somewhat similar in texture to ground hamburger), then another layer of “neeps and tatties”.

It certainly did not smell as some cartoons would make you believe. In fact it was very tasty. The puree/meat combination was very nice. The haggis itself tasted like very tasty hamburger. Low grade meats rule!

St. Andrews bar is located at 120 W 44th St, Between 6th & Broadway.

The most exotic Australian thing that I had was kangaroo jerky that my friend brought me from her trip to Australia. It tasted a lot like chicken jerky :)

NYC’s Syntactic Sugar

If you buy food from New York’s street vendors long enough you will notice that New Yorkers developed some of what programmers call “syntactic sugar“. As I mentioned in my post about coffee and Greek cups, “coffee, regular” stands for “milk, two spoons of sugar”.

There’s a more extreme example. I gained a bit of weight recently after I started to have “low carb” bagels from a nearby bagel store for breakfast. I highly suspect that those things are a low carb version of non-fat yogurt from that Seinfeld episode. But while having breakfast there I remembered another example of New York’s syntactic sugar. “Bagel, scooped”. From what I hear a scooped bagel is New York-specific.

Here’s how it’s made : the bagel is cut in half, and then each half is hollowed out with tongs. When you put the two halves back together the hollowed out space forms an empty channel inside the bagel. Thus altered topology of the torus is highly conducive to non-falling-out of cream cheese or egg salad. Indeed, a scooped bagel with cream cheese is much easier to eat on the train without violating the rules about littering. (Although I’ve seen MTA ad signs that say that eating in subway is prohibited there seems to be no rule against eating and drinking non-alocoholic beverages in the Rules of Conduct).

The Building

Believe it or not, I finally visited my favorite building. My earlier detailed article about the building is here. And here are some photographic notes (a lot of the pictures did not come out well because it was already dark):

From the ground you do not get the same airy, soaring feeling because the massive base hides the true proportions of the tower. But there are redeeming features up close, like this dramatic and unusual triple flagpole:

Once you get closer, other beautiful details come into view, like this stunning art deco lamp:

The lobby is Deco elegance itself:

Later we had dinner at a restaurant in the South Street Seaport. The food was so-so, but the view was amazing:

Knowledge Worker’s Dream

I recently remembered the most amazing story that I’ve read 5 or 6 years ago, and my wife found the book that contains it yesterday. The book is called “Fairy Tales For Computers“. , and the story is “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster.

The story was written in 1909 and since it’s in public domain now, so the full text of it is online.

It’s a story of a future in which people live in small apartments underground, all cared for by an almost Matrix-style machine, communicating almost exclusively through telepresence.

“‘Who is it?’ she called. Her voice was irritable, for she had been interrupted often since the music began. She knew several thousand people, in certain directions human intercourse had advanced enormously.”

“Vashanti’s next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one’s own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? – say this day month.
To most of these questions she replied with irritation – a growing quality in that accelerated age. She said that the new food was horrible. That she could not visit the public nurseries through press of engagements. That she had no ideas of her own but had just been told one-that four stars and three in the middle were like a man: she doubted there was much in it. Then she switched off her correspondents, for it was time to deliver her lecture on Australian music. “

Living constantly communicating with hundreds or even thousands of correspondents, looking for and generating “ideas”, being served by and cared for by automatons – isn’t that a knowledge worker’s dream? Are you scared yet? Don’t “accumulations of the last three minutes” strike you familiar? Your inbox, your livejournal “friends” feed?

Too bad that “A Logic Named Joe” is not out of copyright. These two stories together are an irrefutable proof of time travel. But none of you will read it, so nobody will believe me anyway.

Unrussian Profession or Dig Me My Grave Long Wide and Deep

Thanks to a recommendation from I bought “Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs“. It’s really a tribute to an older book called “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”.

Gig consists of monologues of a wide cross section of working people. There’s a porn star, a software developer, prison guard, a prisoner (don’t know if that’s technically a job), an air force general, a high school teacher, a journalist and enough representatives of other professions to make a thousand “x y and z walk into a bar” jokes.

My favorite little story was about a single mom who had a gig as a psychological warfare specialist. She ended up getting my dream job when an Army recruiter asked her about her specialization preference. Since “spy” was not an option she took the next best thing.
Modern psywarriors, like this girl, sometimes hail from rather somewhat rural places, so they get a lot of multicultural sensitivity training. One point brought home to them is that it is very important to never refuse native food or drink that is offered to them by friendlies, even if it’s gross. In training they even have a mock dinner during which they have to down “weird” drinks and eat “weird” food. That training kind of came in handy to our protagonist, as she was offered “gruel goat” meal in Africa which you had to eat with your hands. She handled that well.

Turkish coffee turned out to be a stumbling block for her : ” … Turkish coffee. It’s got like a half an inch of grounds on the bottom. Well, I didn’t know if I was supposed to eat the grounds or not …”

What to do, what to do? Of course she decided to ask one of the guys. Guess what kind of advice he gave her. Riiight. I’d do the same thing.

Anyway, you can read her story here tanks to the guy at Amazon who sneaked full text search past the lawyers.

touched upon the most fascinating topic of what professions “Russian” immigrants never choose. Police officer appeared rather often on the list of professions suggested by her readers. Well, a guy who’s desk was right next to mine in a High School pre-calculus class finished the Police Academy here in New York. I am not sure if he actually became a cop though.

One story that he told me was kind of funny (I can’t judge it’s truthfulness though) . He smokes a lot. And once he was caught smoking right next to what he described as an “ammo dump”. The instructor who caught him came up with a creative punishment. My friend was forced to dig a proper human size grave and then bury the cigarette butt in it. Yeah, being an NYPD cadet is tough.

Another “Russian” classmate of mine became a US Marine. I wonder where he is right now. “Semper Fi” means the same thing even with a Russian accent. Yeah. By the way, the motto of NYPD is “Fidelis Ad Mortem”.

Bonjurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, Ya Cheese (ok, you know the rest)

From an article called The Problem With the French by Gene Weingarten. Washington Post, Sunday, September 7, 2003; Page W14

… “Well, we like big portions back in the States,” I say, patting my tummy. “I was wondering if you agree that American chefs are better than French chefs because they give you more food.”
Maurice listens to the translation. There is a moment of silence. And then he begins to speak very rapidly.
“He says French chefs make love to their food . . .” Jerome translates.
And American chefs? I ask.
Now Maurice is really elocutionizing. His hands are flying. He appears to be pointing to . . . his derriere. I don’t really have to wait for the translation, but when it arrives, it does not disappoint.
American chefs, he says, make love to the food, too. But in a most unnatural and deviant way.
VoilĂ . …

They are just jealous that they did not come up with deep fried Oreos.

Little known fact about : during his tenure at Nathan’s Famous at Coney Island sometimes worked at the seafood station, where among other things he deep fried and served frog legs. They taste like something that was breaded and deep fried.

Two and Four-legged Bomb Protection

JWZ posted a link about a trained hawk that attacked a Chihuahua in Bryant Park. The hawks were used for scaring away pigeons. The hawks were well fed, but still tried to kill a pigeon or two. And of course they could not pass up Mexican food. Yeah, it’s tough to be a lap dog in NYC. If the swans in Central Park won’t get you, the hawks in Bryant Park will.

Of course ratbirds are annoying and a health hazard, but in this case we are talking about the exact spot where Tesla fed pigeons. These are the descendants of Tesla’s pigeons! I guess he’d be pretty pissed about the hawks.

So now it looks like the hawk program will get canned because of the stupid lap dog. That’s too bad – trained hawks are pretty cool. Too bad I didn’t know about the hawks before, or I would have taken pictures. In fact I think I saw the hawk dude in the park, but I thought that he was in for a renaissance fair or something.

Hawks are not the only critters that keep New Yorkers safe from bombs. On my way to work I pass up a guy with a bomb sniffing dog standing in the area where trucks are unloading in the building where I work. In fact, there are a few of these dogs around. I wonder if they found a single bomb.