Melina: An Evening In Williamsburg, or, It's Not Easy Being Cool

Hey! I managed to get back on "old blogger!" I wonder what changed.

Last night my high school friend Katherine was in a fashion show. It was just a little one. She didn't tell us about it, so we only found out by seeing that she'd joined a Facebook.com group called 'Just Because She Dances Go-Go It Don't Make Her a Ho, No." When interrogated, she told me and my other high school friend Mary not to go, but of course we went anyway. Urban Caballero in tow.

The show was at a bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just across the river from the Urban Caballero's house. Very convenient. It is always slightly weird going to Williamsburg because nobody who lives there is over 30. You sort of feel like you're in Logan's Run and everyone in your subway train is about to be shot. What's more, it's always a little bit like Halloween in Williamsburg. A lot of people just go around in costume, just because. Mary said she'd seen someone in a Williamsburg bar who she was sure was a nun. But was it really a nun? Or was it just clothing styles coming full circle? "Hey, you know what we haven't done? Baggy, plain brown floor-length dresses!"

The bar was holding the fashion show because they'd just lost their cigar license - New York is notoriously strict about its tobacco laws. This was particularly a problem because the bar was called the "Velvet Cigar Bar" and they had been unable to serve hard liquor because they were serving cigars. So now they had no cigars and no hard liquor and so they decided to sell sexy women instead, by way of this fashion show. Pretty much the logical choice, it seems to me. I wonder if that will be a good enough concept to keep them in business.

Melina's cocktail ($8): Champagne, pomegranate juice, mango juice.
Urban Caballero's cocktail ($8): Sake, ginger, cucumber juice (this took a long time to make because the cucumber shreds got stuck in the cocktail shaker and the bartender had to poke them a little).

The fashion designer made all "recycled clothes" - ie cutting up some baggy pants to turn into a sexy top, cutting up a baggy t-shirt to turn into a sexy dress, cutting up a sexy dress to make it into an even sexier dress. I actually used to do stuff like this as a kid and was impressed that someone had pursued the concept.

Katherine was wearing a very sexy dress but she was in a foul mood. I was in a good mood but was quite overdressed. All the women in this bar - if not wearing recycled clothing - were wearing very tight very dark blue jeans and small slinky tops, and carrying gigantic leather purses that could have fit half a case of wine apiece. More upscale than your typical Williamsburg crowd. The Urban Caballero, who doesn't like crowds, said in a bewildered tone, "all these women look the same!" They kept accidentally hitting him witih their gigantic leather purses. I told him I thought it was like wearing a uniform, or like camouflage. You don't want to be picked out from the herd. It's like Wild America with Marty Stouffer. Anyway, I had been feeling slightly under the weather, so I was wearing flannel pants and the Urban Caballero's hunting cap.

The men were wearing tight-ish jeans (are tight jeans on men coming back?? Oh joyous day!) thin button-down collarless shirts or worn t-shirts, long shaggy hair (Irish Setter hair, sort of), and sometimes corduroy caps tilted oh-so-slightly to the side and worn high on the head (as if to say, I'm too carefree to adjust my hat correctly on my head).

Katherine pulled herself together and walked in the fashion show (to the end of the bar and back). We were very proud of her. Then we left Williamsburg and went home and watched a few episodes of The Simpsons to calm our jangled nerves. It's not easy being cool.

-Melina

Melina: A fun thing for a high school age Jewish kid to do

I got info about this program from my job. I don't know very many high schoolers right now, but I would have loved to do this when I was in high school.

Then again, I was a huge dork.

The Samberg Family History Program

An Academic Summer Fellowship for High School Students
July 2 - 27, 2007

The Samberg Family History Program will engage you in a multi-faceted exploration of Jewish history and your family's past. We draw upon all of the resources at the Center for Jewish History: our world-renowned collections of books, archival documents, photographs, artifacts, paintings, films, sound recordings, and textiles; our expert curators, archivists, and librarians; our technology offerings, knowledgeable historians, and caring educators. Based in the heart of New York City, we also take great advantage of our city's myriad important research institutions and historic sites.

Through the generosity of the Samberg Family Foundation, all students accepted into the Program receive full tuition fellowships and are recognized as Samberg High School Fellows. As a Fellow, you are both a student, learning a subject, and an apprentice, pursuing research into the Jewish past alongside the worldwide community of academics, genealogists, and others who come to use the collections housed at the Center for Jewish History.

The Samberg Family History Program is co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish History's Genealogy Institute and the American Jewish Historical Society and funded by the Samberg Family Foundation.

We invite you to contact us to learn more about the program and about how you can discover your own history.

Melina: Thematic Postscript

Have you noticed that one of Melinama's most frequent technorati tags is "Folly"? I would say it's probably one of the main themes of this blog.

In one of Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books, Dortmunder has to steal a painting called "Folly Leads Man Into Ruin." I wish we had a copy of that painting.

This Morning Melina Ran the Half Marathon in 20 degree weather!

race!

1.) get up at 6:30, go to bathroom five times, eat strawberry pop tart. those things are better than energy bars. none of those inconvenient minerals or protein weighing youd own. stare outside. dark and windy. put on 4 layers of clothing: green sleeveless shirt, orange fluorescent turtleneck, red fleece, purple windbreaker. Attach timing device, the "ChampionChip," to shoe.

2.) stumble out of the house, take the subway to west 86th and jog across the park to the start line.

3.) you know it's going to be a long morning when you have to chip the ice out of your water cup. 19 degrees and windy. fingers numb. feet numb. race director tries to instil some spirit into us. he is fairly effective. i take my fingers out of the fingers of the gloves and ball my hands up inside my gloves.

4.) started out at a nice slow pace because i was behind 1000 people. so forced to stay at 9:15 minute/mile pace for the first couple miles. no, literally 1000 people. then gradually started picking it up. and -- hey. how was I at 36:00 for 4 miles? wow, i guess this is going better than I thought. stay easy, stay easy. I get a huge throbbing pain in my right hip, the protestations of an understretched muscle. quiet, muscle. if i tried to stretch you this morning, you would snap. trust me. i stopped at about the 5th mile and stretched out the hip and it quieted down a little bit. all kinds of runners. they keep yelling at everyoen to stay to the left of the cones or theyll be dq'ed, but every 3rd person is runningm to the right of the cones. thus, in the crowd, you cant see ahead of you, and trip over the cones and kick them halfway across the street by accident. kind of dangerous! okay 6 miles around the park and still feeling great. the old cross country instincts kick in and I'm passing a lot of people, particularly when cresting the hills, as my old cross country coach taught us.

5.) let's pick it up a little more. holding steady at around 8:40 miles (the goal had been 9). only start to feel like crap half way through the secondlap, rigth when dad says i'm supposed to be picking it up, according to running "experts." huh. what do they know. crap! okay, I pick it up a *little*. then a little more. okay, now my right foot's crampign a little because my new shoes aren't quite broken in enough, still stiff. oh well, just two more miles.

6.) Finish just under 1:53, the Urban Caballero is there hollering, and holds me up as I stagger back west across the park. I remember to return my microchip from off my shoe. the support staff is really nice, and I'm totally trouncing this course.

7.) go home. take very hot shower. eat gigantic plate of waffles. feel pleased with self. put on race shirt. take nap.

Melina: This Weekend's Painting

This is my friend Helen in the bathtub.

  

Melina: On Undergraduates

I love undergraduates. Lively, friendly people. Out to do good in the world. Generally harmless. But they do not know how to plan. On about 48 hours notice, I am housing three of them so that they can attend Zlatne Uste's Golden Festival in New York City.

I think this will be a right good time. But could they maybe have told me just a little bit sooner?

--Melina, washing sheets and towels

Melina: recent artworks

Melina: Watching Television in the New Year is Depressing

I had the day off of work yesterday. I celebrated by spending most of the day watching TV with my roommates. We watched about half of a six hour documentary about some guys climbing Mount Everest. The documentary was stressful and awfully long. We'd go away and come back and there they'd be, still climbing Everest. Usually somebody would be in critical condition in the medical tent, and a wise old climber would be standing over him shaking his head disapprovingly. ("James should never have tried to go up Everest with all those metal screws in his knee.")

Anyway, I wanted to point out that television advertisers have made New Year the most depressing holiday in existence. Judging by the ads they ran yesterday, they think all of us are fat, depressed, indebted, and lonely, and that Jan 1 is the one brief day of the year when we might have the willpower to try to get off the couch and change some of these conditions. Or at least buy some products that we think might help:

#1 - weight loss, weight loss, weight loss. I have never seen so many weight loss ads. The most frequent one showed a 3d model of a fat person (they did a man in one version and a woman in the other) and then the fat melting off them. While the 3D model rotated, a warm female voice said, "you don't have to exercise or diet to lose weight! Just eat! Call now and you can get a free week of food!" Other weight loss ads featured men talking - somewhat creepily - about their sex lives, and women saying laughingly "My husband now calls me his trophy wife!" Um, ew.

#2 - Get Out Of Debt Free. A stern lawyer in an austere ad tells you that he can solve your financial problems. Just call. No specifics here. Just call, will you? The stern lawyers will take care of you.

#3 - Take Some Drugs. Depressed? the happy bouncing circle can help.

#4 - eHarmony ads. Now this is really embarrassing, but I have to admit that these ads can make me tear up on occasion. Real happy couples gazing into each other eyes and declaring lifelong loyalty over bouncy pop soundtrack. Have heard rumors that Neil Clark Warren who runs eHarmony is a big right-winger, but his compassionate paternal presence just soothes me. I'm worthy of love, Neil. Tell me who's my soul mate. I want to be in your commercial.

Happy New Year all. Get off the couch.
-Melina

Melina: New Years and News

Today is Melinama's birthday! Please wish her a very happy birthday. She is a great musician, a great mom, and a great blogger. Of course, she also has numerous other talents that range from home construction to teaching to papier-mache. Unlike many people in this world, Melinama has created many things that have never existed before, and she also helps other people create things that have never existed before. Kol haKavod!

The report from New York:

The best word I can thik of to describe New York this week is "redistributed." Most of the natives are on vacation or are staying home. To replace them, thousands of tourists have arrived. The tourists are chiefly concentrated on Broadway and Fifth Avenue. So Broadway and Fifth Avenue are jampacked - the street vendors have never done better - but most other places are near-empty.

Last night I bought a beautiful pair of chenille gloves from a street vendor for $5. Then I saw a great Italian movie called La Bella Vita with John and Emily at the MoMA. I got to go for free because Emily's employer has a "corporate relationship" with the MoMA. The movie was about a pair of newlyweds in a small, failing factory town in Italy. The women in this movie were very curvy and had gigantic hair. The menfolk thought these were truly delightful qualities and made dramatic scenes about how they were overcome by love. Everyone spoke very dramatically and swore a lot. Really it was excellent.

In Which Melina has a Posh Lunch

I promised Ma I'd write about my lunch last week at the Four Seasons Restaurant (my first time - this was a perk of my job) where people in New York come when they want to spend more money on lunch than anyone else thinks is even possible, they want to be part of the scene, but they don't really want the food to be that weird.

The Grill Room at the Four Seasons is decorated in tasteful black. The furniture is comfortable, yet understated. The chairs are low, and the tables are all in one big room, so that you can see who else is eating there the moment you walk in. This is not done by accident.

The maitre d' knows your name and your preferred table. With silent footsteps he ushers you to your rightful place, asking if you would like the glass of red wine before the meal again, or whether you would rather wait, as you did last time, and take the white.

Your co-diners are older businessmen. Perhaps 25% businesswomen or spouses. They all wear black suits. They all look like people you might have seen on the news once: congressmen, financiers, women with really great hair. They are so high-ranking that they don't have to rush through lunch - the office moves on their time. Usually there is someone famous around; often it is a Clinton. Sometimes you won't recognize him, but if he walks through and shakes hands with people at about four different tables, he is probably a politician.

The day that I went last week, there was also a big table of entertainment executives, clearly in a celebratory mood, passing around a hardbound copy of "Top 101 Celebrity Meltdowns" that they must have just produced. You could tell they were in entertainment because there were more women, and one of the women was even wearing a dark red suit (as opposed to a black one).

Here's what they bring you before your meal:

-A glass of water

-A bowl of mixed vegetables in ice water (this is actually a neat trick, because it keeps the vegetables very crispy, but let's face it, it's just radishes and broccoli in a tin bowl)

-One dinner roll (neither super fresh nor super stale)

The tuxedo-clad waiter, who slips silently around the restaurant, leans in close when taking your order, so that he can answer any pressing questions about the menu without disturbing your dining companions. Also so you can try to pronounce "Meuniere" without embarassing yourself.

Here's what I ordered:

Kabocha Pumpkin Bisque with Apple Fritters, $18, and
Roasted Sea Bass, Pumpkin Risotto, Porcini Mushrooms, $42.

Here's what else you can have:

Japanese Kobe Burger, $55. (Yes! A burger and fries for $55! One of my co-diners, one of hoi polloi, ordered this, and then was so intimidated he decided he had to try and eat it with a knife and fork!)

Or if you're on a diet:

Butter Lettuce, Bleu Cheese, Spicy Cashews, Sesame Dressing, $22.

or, if you're really going for gold:

Dover Sole Meuniere, $56.

Meuniere (I looked it up) means basically "sauteed in butter with some lemon." Why they are charging $56 dollars for this is beyond me, but I don't ask questions.

After the meal, if you don't want dessert (Apple Pie, Raisin, Armagnac-Pear Ice Cream) they will bring you a seasonal cookie tray. I had been told I was allowed to order dessert, but in spite of the indulgent "take the kids out to lunch" atmosphere prevailing at my table, I couldn't overcome my shyness. If nobody else was having, I couldn't bring myself to order the intriguing looking Poached Pear, Roasted Pecan Ice Cream, Milk Chocolate Pound Cake, let alone the (overreaching, methinks) Lemon-Ricotta Cheesecake, Rosemary, Glazed Grapes (all $14).

The table of entertainment executives celebrated with a gigantic communal dessert - a pile of cotton candy the size of a human torso sitting on a huge silver platter (it tilted slightly to one side). Yes, the Four Seasons has a cotton candy machine. (My boss, unimpressed, commented that she has seen them stick lighted candles in the cotton candy pile when it's someone's birthday)

After lunch ends, most tables (mine included) never see anything as unsightly as a check. The Four Seasons discreetly sends the check to the address of your choosing. Your office will handle it.

Melina: Still Alive

Hi all,

Sorry to be such an absentee blog hostess. I've been working, watching woot, carousing, and practicing theater tricks with the Urban Caballero (pretending to walk into walls, stage-slapping each other on the subway platform).

Actually, the Urban Caballero was in an excellent show this week. It was high concept, which I usually hate, but I make an exception for this one. His co-stars, all highly entertaining, included a number of Ivy League alumni, an electronic music artist, an up-and-coming actor who just got his big break starring in an Italian panty liner commercial, and a couple of hard-drinking, Gothic-influenced Australians. The director, a tall sleepy-eyed young man with a silky 1960s-style beard, staged the play in several different rooms in one building at Columbia. Between scenes, a solemn usher carrying a boombox would escort us to the next room, while cast members rushed or wandered by, or conversed with each other, in character, in the hallways.

This succeeded in making us all feel extremely uncomfortable. The first scene was set in the building's computer lab. We all sat down at computer stations, where "our Gmail" was already open. As the scene went on around us, we were presented with additional side-commentary via GChat. This worked perfectly, because all of us Millennial-generation computerheads are incapable of sitting down at a computer without opening our Gmail, and to see a GChat talking to us, when we were unable to respond, was deeply disturbing.

I actually think someone could make a great theater piece using only instant messenger. IM'ed communications possess a unique combination of urgency and inscrutability that would lend itself very well to drama.

Another classic scene today: going to get a picture framed. New York picture framers are a noble, tragic breed. They strive to perfection - the perfect match, the perfect rectangle - but are inevitably undone by the errors of others: the artists, who inconsiderately paint to the very edges of their canvases; the customers, who don't know what they're looking for ("a chrome? or a silver? with rounded edges? No, wait, maybe it was squarer than that...") and who always think the framers are out to cheat them.

Visiting the framing store, I was privy to a conversation between a (distressed) customer and an (irritable, resigned) framer.

Customer: "This frame you put on my picture is crooked."

Framer: "The frame is straight. It is your picture that's crooked."

Customer: "But it is closer on the left side than on the right side."

Framer: "It is closer at the top of the left side. It is farther at the bottom of the left side. That is because the canvas is wider at the top than at the bottom."

Customer [unhappily rocking picture back and forth]: "What if you shifted the painting farther toward the left?"

Framer [staring, also unhappily, at picture]: "Then it would be *really* close at the top left corner."

Customer: "Did you try moving it higher up in the frame?"

Framer: "That wouldn't help."

Customer: "Why?"

Framer: "Then it would still be uneven, but it would just be farther than the bottom."

Customer: "What if you made it even at the top?"

Framer: "Then it would be uneven at the bottom."

Customer: "But why can't you move it any closer?"

Framer: "The artist painted around the edges of the canvas. We talked about this. We didn't want to lose that much of the painting."

Customer: "Not any closer?"

Framer: "We talked about this."

[Pause.]

[Customer sadly eyes painting. Framer sadly eyes customer.]

Customer: "So...." [pause] "So you're saying, basically, this is the best you could do?"

Framer [patiently, resignedly] nods.

Customer: "Well then... okay." He pays and leaves.




Two thirds of arguments, I think, could be boiled down to this final exchange.

"Was this really the best you could do?"
"Yes."
"Then okay."

They would have saved a lot of time if they'd just cut to that part sooner.

Endlessly searching for perfection,
--Melina

Melina: That's So Boring, Grandpa

Ma and I enjoy collecting examples of narcissistic Baby Boomer writing. There is certainly a lot of it out there. The pieces tend to run along the lines of "The Baby Boomers were so unique, and heroic, in the 60s" or "Whatever will the Baby Boomers do, now that they've turned [40, 50, 60...]?"

Part of my job is to scan the Jewish media for articles that may be relevant to what we do. And yesterday I came across this gem:

"Bubbie and Zaide were Hippies"

['Bubbie' and 'Zaide' are common Jewish nicknames for Grandma and Grandpa.']

Now, this is a very sweet article, but its overall thesis I find a bit unrealistic - that the grandchildren of hippies will enjoy listening to stories about how Grandma and Grandpa used to pass their days when they were flower children. I am merely one generation removed from The Hippies, and I already find these stories stultifyingly dull. Here's one excerpt from the above article, where the optimistic author envisions regaling her grandchildren:

Where is the Jewish children's book called "Bubbe and Zaide were Hippies"? The most meaningful experience of faith for today's bubbes and zaidies is unlikely to be being saved from physical attack; it is more likely to be the first time they prayed outside at sunrise following an all-night Shavuot [holiday] study session. How lovely the illustration of this could be: Zaide, 30 years younger, in his jeans and rainbow-colored tallit [prayer shawl], the sun rising in soft watercolors.

Sorry, but all this story says to me is that Zaide likes imagining himself 30 years younger. And I'm afraid that Zaide has been spending too much time admiring his rainbow-colored
tallit in the mirror if he thinks his grandchildren are going to have the slightest interest in this story.

Technorati Tags: Jewish, Hippy, Narcissism

Melina: On my way home

Ma always taught me to clean my room before I leave for a trip. So that's my project for tonight. I had a laundry emergency, which is to say I procrastinated doing my own laundry until it was too late, and I had to pay for my friendly local laundromat to do the laundry for me. I won't tell you how much it costs to get this done, but on the bright side, they fold each item of clothing into a perfect rectangle, and then compact the rectangles together into a perfect cube for you to carry home.

The young guys who work there are not necessarily so thrilled about the work, but they do take obvious pride in how perfect and compact they can make their laundry cubes. They have taken the process that you or I might call "putting the laundry into a plastic bag" and transformed it into something more like "manual shrinkwrapping." I sometimes see an older one inducting a younger one into the fine art - pointing out some errant sleeve or demonstrating his exact strategy for squishing the cube as tightly as possible.

Because when your clothes are folded very tiny, they fit better into your very tiny closet.

Sigh.

--Melina

P.S. My dad is having Thanksgiving at the beach. It's going to be great, but I better not be the one riding three hours in the car with a raw turkey in my lap (though I'm sure the dog would be happy to volunteer for the job).

P.P.S. Mom, you took down those trip wires, right? You know the ones I'm talking about.

Technorati Tags: diary

In Which Melina Overdoses on News

Last night the Urban Caballero hosted an election party. He printed up gigantic scoreboards where we could track all the Senate, House, and governorship races in play. Every time a new result was announced, the two party-goers who were actually paying attention would holler at him, and he would race over to the scoreboard and mark the result. (Frequently, we would holler something incorrect, and would get chastised.) His friends are a decidedly urban group of damas and caballeros, but many of them are still registered to vote in the important swing states where they grew up. So you'd think these people could make a serious impact on the outcomes of these close races. However, only two of them voted. (Melina, who missed the absentee deadline for her North Carolina ballot, was not one of these two). We were discussing that this was not a good state of affairs.

The Urban Caballero commented that he was distressed that he did not receive an "I voted" sticker when he voted. This led us into a discussion about voting incentives. Can you imagine what would happen if everyone who voted got a free candy bar or souvenir? Perhaps something similar to what can be found inside a Happy Meal or Kinder Egg. It would cost our country about ten cents per person, and I'm sure voting turnout would increase 10%, at least. People are pretty simple that way. If you vote in an election, you get a horrible middle-aged guy with bad hair who talks like he knows what you want. And within the next two years, you usually end up hating him. If you buy a Kinder Egg, by contrast, you get little bit of good chocolate and a really fun toy. Don't you think that would offset the pain of voting, just a little bit?

Melina: Close Encounters

So this guy Ted Haggard, who just resigned in response to allegations that he bought meth from and had sex with a male prostitute --- I was on the phone with this guy's assistant yesterday, two hours before the news broke, trying to find out something about Christian camps for work (eh, it wasn't *so* related, but it sounded interesting).

And the assistant sounded really weird and quiet. And I thought he was just socially awkward, or because I was Jewish, but now I'm thinking it's more likely that he sounded weird because HE JUST FOUND OUT HIS BOSS WHO RUNS A 14,000 MEMBER EVANGELICAL CHURCH HAD BEEN TAKING DRUGS AND HAVING SEX WITH A MALE PROSTITUTE.

Take a look at this guy. Honestly, doesn't this just *look* like someone on drugs?

Apparently, when "Pastor Ted" first set up shop in Colorado Springs, he'd go hang around, all Jesus-like, with the "sinners." These naturally included some drug dealers and some patrons of gay bars.

Looks like maybe he was hoping for something other than to save them.



Technorati Tags: Ted Haggard

Melina Takes In Some Culture, Does Not Spit On Walls

I'm a little bit dazed this week from a culture trifecta: I went to the Metropolitan Opera with our new character El Caballero on Monday, to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade on Tuesday, and then to the musical Grey Gardens on Broadway on Wednesday.

There were certain similarities between the Opera and the Halloween Parade. Both were gigantic undertakings, involving a lot of loud music and astonishing numbers of people in costume traveling in more or less the same direction. The funny thing about the Halloween parade was that as weird as it was, it wasn't *that* much weirder than walking down the street on a normal evening around here. It was unclear why some people were onlookers and others were in the parade - while there were a few organized groups, there were a lot of just people in your standard costumes (superman, George Bush, killer E-Coli Spinach) walking down sixth avenue. It really seemed very normal. The opera, by contrast, was so impossibly elaborate and complex that although it was a stage production, it read like a movie or a TV show. Most "normal" theater is far more sparing in design, so it was hard to remember that the opera involved actual humans doing the things that usually take an army of computers to invent.

Melina: Mojo and Rage

Last week I had to take a break from my online personals site. I was just getting too grouchy. A Very Creepy Guy (his profile talked about how famous he was and how much he hated most people, they were a waste of good drugs) wrote me a perfectly nice letter asking me about myself. And in response I just attacked him. I wrote him a fairly long, mean letter that said, thanks for your nice letter, but we can never meet up and here's why. The Very Creepy Guy wrote back a letter asking "What the hell is wrong with you? I am a total stranger who wrote you a very nice letter. Why did you attack me?"

And I thought - Very Creepy Guy's got a point. I am acting like a crazy person. I should not do this if I am carrying around all this anger. It's not fair to Creepy Guys or to any other kind of guy.

So I'm on a break from the online personals.

Melina: Batman's new hobby

So I've written before about the New York City Crap Fair, which is a spring through fall phenomenon wherein thousands of vendors gather on a different avenue each weekend day to sell such important items as:

Gyros
Arepas
Crepes
Cell phone covers
Pirated music
gigantic earrings
massages
I Love New York T-shirts

On Saturday, the Crap Fair was taking place on 8th avenue, a block from my apartment. I wandered over to see if there was any crap that I needed. Like, maybe I would need a cell phone cover.

The house salsa band from one of my favorite Cuban restaurants, Azucar, had taken up residence outside the restaurant and were playing for an appreciative crowd that had paused their tour of the crap fair to listen to this unexpectedly excellent music.

All of a sudden, a guy dressed in full batman regalia (black mask with full head covering and ears, cape, head to toe black) races into the center of the circle formed by the crowd, and starts dancing a salsa with himself. And he was shredding. I mean, he was incredible. The guy was up, he was down, he knew all the moves. All this in an ankle length cape!

The band took this completely in stride, and immediately changed the lyrics of the chorus of the song they were singing to "Que baila el Batman, que baila el Batman."

Batman danced salsa for a good 15 minutes, then saluted the band and raced away, disappearing into the crowd.

So in case any of you were wondering, Batman is alive and well, he's living in New York, and he's apparently been taking some dancing lessons.

Melina Illustration Friday: "Quiet"

About 10 years ago, my dad decided that Zed and I should learn some anatomy. To teach us anatomy, he bought a gigantic anatomically correct torso named "Tall Paul."

Tall Paul eventually got returned to the manufacturer because he was very expensive and he smelled weird. But for a period of weeks, this guy was living in our living room. Every time we wanted to put him away because guests were coming, it became a tremendous ordeal. I remember frantically trying to cram organs back into Tall Paul a la the showdown scene in "Catch-22." For each one that I put in, another two would fall out.

Ew.

Melina's Life: El Comico Timido, El Yeshivabocher, El Productor

Three in a row this week. Whew. And all on weeknights. I'm going to have to get some sleep this weekend.

El Comico Timido seemed reasonably lively, observant, and sweet on his profile. I picked him because it said that he built his own loft bed, and I've been a little bit grumpy these days that neither I nor anybody I know is able to produce anything that is concrete and useful. When he showed up, he was a little bit tongue tied, and sometimes when I made a joke his eyes would widen slightly in alarm as he tried to figure out if I meant what I was saying. I liked him fine, but guy didn't come out of his shell too far. My male friends argued vehemently to give him another chance, but I might have scared him too bad already.

El Yeshivabocher was the one who asked if I was a mod or a rocker. Apparently it's a quote from a Beatles movie, and I should have maybe googled it before I started making fun of him for it. Oops. He turned out to be a solemn, stooped med student, with that pale yeshiva face (radiologists sit in dark rooms all day, just like their ancestors) but he had the spark of life. I liked him a lot, and he said the same, but people lie like crazy at the end of a date just to make things less awkward. So I have no idea if he's actually interested. Sigh.

El Productor I called because I had two tickets to a great concert last night and he said he liked the singer. He did, and he came bearing a CD of her earlier work and a package of gummy bears, which were both very pleasing in the eyes of Melina. Another great guy. Wow, so many great guys out there! He's just not a match, though - but it was nice to have the company.


Technorati Tags: Internet Dating, Online Dating