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).