Episode 20: Bodies In Motion

The son of Geezer loans us his Battery Park apartment from time to time. For the weekend, it feels like our very own pied-a-terre. (That French phrase means "to dismount", did you know?) Following our conviction that sightseeing is what you do to fill the hours between meals, we set off for the South Street Seaport. It was quiet now, in winter and with the adjoining Fulton Fish Market recently moved to The Bronx, but the "Bodies" exhibition was doing business.
If that enterprise has escaped your notice - versions are being shown in several cities - it displays real bodies stripped of their skins and preserved through a complicated chemical process. To illustrate the ways the body moves and functions, muscles, tendons, and organs are exposed in various ways to demonstrate specific actions. The most fascinating rooms show nervous and circulatory systems, in some miraculous way separated from the bodies that housed them and dyed red, a resulting effect that resembles tangles of scarlet lace.
Representative nuggets conferred while walking through the galleries: "While every other cell in the body has 46 chromosomes, the female sex cell, the egg, and the male sex cell, the sperm, have only 23. Only when egg and sperm combine is a new cell created that is capable of developing into a human." And, "A woman is born with all the eggs she'll ever have." Maybe you knew all that, but Geezer barely got past 9th grade earth science.
It's a temporary commercial museum and admission is expensive - $23.50 each for seniors. But it is tasteful and educational, and the visitors are respectful. And no, the bodies don't smell. (11 Fulton St. at Front St., www.bodiestickets.com, 1-888-9926-3437.)
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"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."
-Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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OTHER SUNDRY DELUSIONS
What do James S. Gilmore III, Duncan Hunter, Sam Brownback, Dennis J. Kucinich, Mike Huckabee, Tom Vilsack, Christopher J. Dodd, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and George Pataki have in common?
That's right! In stunning examples of the human capacity to isolate ourselves from reality and good sense, they are all running for president. They join the hunt with about six people who actually have a chance. Stay tuned.

Darth Cheney still leads as the long established champ of the deluded with such quotes as "We'll be greeted as liberators." Summoning his uncanny ability to look at a rock and call it cheese, he recently declared that "War can't be run by a committee." By so saying, he ignored the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the civilian leadership of the Defense Department, the chain of command, the C.I.A., White House operatives, and who knows how many clandestine agencies and private contractors.

Still, Dick has yet to beat the departure from logic represented by the sign waved by a Muslim demonstrator at a London protest of the Danish Allah cartoons: "Behead those who say Islam is a violent religion."
************************************************************************************* NAME THAT PUNDIT
Guess the identity of the writer who has put these column leads to paper:

"I've heard the president's surge speech, and I have a reaction, an observation and some advice."

"Sorry to repeat myself, but I have the same reaction to this year's energy proposals in the State of the Union that I had to last year's."

"I know that you should never generalize about global warming from your own weather, but..."

"I recently attended an Asia Society education seminar in Beijing."

Yes, indeed, it's Thomas L. (As-I-Told-Osama-at-Lunch-Yesterday) Friedman, a man who has never met a personal pronoun he didn't like. With an ego as large as Baltimore, Tom not only points out the intractable problems of nations and peoples around the globe, he nearly always has solutions, if only the authorities would just listen.
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Continuing our weekend in Manhattan...After the "Bodies", we walked north a few blocks in a blisteringly cold wind to Chinatown. A little way down Mott Street is Ping, a seafood emporium popular with several recent mayors. Downstairs is a relatively formal dining room, while upstairs is a noisy but orderly lunchtime dim sum parlor. The room was crammed, but a table was quickly found for us. There were only a few other Caucasian patrons, which we like to assume is evidence of authenticity. (But then, the presence of Europeans in hundreds of McDonald's feeding troughs doesn't suggest anything other than the worldwide corruption of taste.)
Order as many dumplings and related treats from the trolleys pushed past until full, and the final bill for two, with tea and Tsingtao beer, is unlikely to exceed $25. (22 Mott St. 212-602-9988).
Afterwards, we walked east through ever-expanding Chinatown, then north into the Lower East Side. We passed the store of the famous Pickle Man, but it was the Saturday sabbath and closed. Just across Delancy was the entrance to the Essex Street Market. It's a covered market, evolved from the days when pushcarts lined these streets. It's still fairly basic and straightforward, and apart from the upscale Saxelby Cheesemongers booth, there's nothing chi-chi about it. Call it an "if you're in the neighborhood" stop.
That night, dinner was at Cookshop in Chelsea. The buzz around it is palpable, but it's fairly new, and still possible to reserve a table at a hour somewhere around dinnertime and not at 5:45 or 10:15. Although crowded with a cheerful mix of artistic sorts and downtown yupsters, we are seated on time. The restaurant observes the "eat locally, organic and sustainable" mantra without being fascistic about it. Fried spiced hominy is an irresistible snack with drinks and the menu (changed daily, of course). Just about everything is given a regional identification - Montauk squid, Hudson Valley rabbit, Maine diver sea scallops, New York strip steak - like that. But this was the middle of January, and they don't pretend that the lemon zest came from a tree out back. My Vermont suckling pig with a parsnip-potato-celeriac mash and pickled pears was eye-rollingly good, the tender flesh encircled by a strip of crackling, salty skin. Give the total experience three out of five stars. (There are no five-star restaurants in Geezer's Indispensible Guide To All Things.) The bill for everything, including cocktails, wine, tax, and tip was under $150, about as fair as prices get in these parts (156 10th Ave. at 20th St., 212-924-4440).

Episode 19: On a Sub-Tropical Island

In December of 2005, Key West was shaking off the destructive effects of Hurricane Wilma. A water surge variously estimated at 13 to 21 feet had thundered across the island, which is only 16 feet above sea level at its highest point.
The streets were lined with ruined cars, furniture, appliances, and towering heaps of tree branches and palm fronds awaiting removal. Saddest, for visitors, was the almost total absence of flowers, ripped from the trees by the devastating winds.
Key Westers rallied. They have been this way before. Festivals scheduled for earlier in the season were packed into one week - a Christmas parade, a pirate festival celebrating the end of hurricane season, and a fiercely R-rated bit of debauchery (parents strongly cautioned) called the Fantasy Fest which featured large numbers of creatively painted all-but-naked young women. Some of the last were stunning. Many others, though, apparently did not have access to mirrors.
A year later, just about everything is back as it was. House repairs are ongoing. The bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani are flourishing. Birds and butterflies have returned. Apart from a few graffiti begging FEMA for relief, Key West has returned to its raffish, raggedy, outrageously hedonistic self.













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"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it."
-Robert Kennedy (1968)

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The More Things Stay The Same

*Bush is about to send up to 30,000 additional troops into Iraq, despite the clear opposite intent of the national electorate in November. Much of this increase will be accomplished by extending the tours of troops already there and sending back soldiers who have served in that fractured nation two, three, or more times.

*Centrist Democrats are waffling, as usual, also despite those same election results.

*With short memories about Enron, WorldCom, and a multitude of other corporate slime factories, the board at Home Depot has given a golden parachute of $274 million to departing C.E.O. Robert L. Nardelli although his company's stock steadily declined over his six years at the helm.

*Researchers at Villanova have discovered that 85 percent of Roman Catholic dioceses experienced embezzlement of church money, with 11 percent reporting that more than $500,000 had been stolen.

*Ever seeking to impose enlightenment, about 10,000 Islamists protested in Karachi against Pakistan's new Women Protection Bill, which reduces the burden of proof for rape victims and moves the crime from coverage under religious laws to prosecution under the penal code. Before the bill's passage, a rape victim had to produce four male Muslim witnesses to prove her accusation and could be convicted of adultery, leading to life in prison or death by stoning.

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Sign spotted in a Key West shop window: "Dear Santa - I can explain..."

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News item: The White House recently asserted that the government has the right to open personal mail without a warrant. Geezer's good friend Dan sent along this list of apropos bumper stickers:

*That's OK. I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway.

*America: One Nation, Under Surveillance.

*Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

*One Nation Under Clod.

*If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran.

*If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President.

*Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?

*Bush Never Exhaled.

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Today's Chuckle:

"Donald Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation has ever had."
-Dick Cheney

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Key West Lingo & Lore

A conch (pronounced "conk") is the creature who lives inside one of those opalescent spiral shells in which you "hear the ocean". Italians call them scungilli. Tough and exceedingly ugly to behold, the flesh is ground up to be cooked in chowder and fritters. Conk is also the name given to native-born Key Westers, a rare breed. Outsiders who have lived in Key West long enough are accorded the title "freshwater conch."

Back in the 1982, residents protested roadblocks set up by the Border Patrol at the mainland end of Route 1, the single road linking the Keys. The agents were seeking drugs and illegal immigrants, but delays were long and tiresome. When letters of complaint and lawsuits failed, Key Westers seceded from the United States and declared themselves the independent Conch Republic. The party lasted a week.
Then the Conch Republic surrendered and applied for foreign aid. From the United States.

Diners are offered dolphin in Keys restaurants. No, not Flipper. That dolphin is a mammal. There is also a multicolored dolphin fish that pulses like neon when hooked. In Hawaii, they call the fish mahi-mahi, and the name has been adopted to sell it to squeamish mainlanders. Down here, some menus grudgingly list it as mahi, but hard-bitten native waitresses still call it dolphin.

Key Westers are a tolerant lot. Their island has long been home to black and white Bahamians, hippies, writers, artists, Cubans, and gays. They are even nice to the cruiseboat passengers and snowbirds who swarm along their streets in nearly overwhelming numbers from December to April.
What most of them don't like are the chickens. No one seems to know exactly when the feral fowl showed up, or how. But they are everywhere, trotting through gardens and dashing across streets. Any visitors who think roosters crow only at dawn are swiftly disabused of the notion. They screech at all hours, and if one of them claims the territory under your bedroom window you will wish for an ax. In this weather, they breed all year.
Of course, there are chicken lovers to counter the haters. The Chicken Store harbors injured or nuisance birds, who are given free range inside the building. Adoption is free, and they can be shipped anywhere in the U.S. Natives will urge you to take advantage of this offer when you leave.
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APPLETINI
Personally, Geezer prefers his booze straight, with ice. But seeing how popular flavored vodka drinks are, he checked appletini recipes. Most seemed excessively fussy, so here's a stripped-to-essentials version. Serves one.

Place a maritini glass in the freezer for a few minutes. Into a cocktail shaker, put a couple of cubes of ice, three ounces of vodka, and two ounces of Dekuper apple pucker schnapps. Shake.
Pour into the glass. Drop in a maraschino cherry as garnish, if you wish.