Moros

Forgive me if this one comes to a bit cloudier than the others. I've just about run out of Will Shortz puzzles and I've been up all night.

I was living in Pequeña Habana at the time. Doing my best Haitian Creole with a heavy South Brooklyn accent.

I could still see the boxes of pseudoephedrine behind the counter in shackles. To this day I can smell the white leather in that idling Corvette. For those on the run, with no time or desire to eat, like most of us were in those days with white knuckles on old suitcases, a shot of café Cubano could revive the dead. I remember the sound of the heavy door on that old Corvette closing behind me. The big getaway. I thought we'd pulled it off. Figures it would turn out to be the last car door I'd ever close. Hell, it was the last Yank tank I'd ride in for a very, very long time but what a score it would have been.

The morning I'd meet my bride, Moros, I was having a leisurely breakfast at Versailles. It was no Café Tortoni but it was comfortable and the waitresses knew my face. I always sat in the same table and ordered the same thing: a tostada and café con leche. I'd usually break the tostada into pieces, then dunk it into the café con leche. Just like Americans would dunk their doughnuts into their coffee. I had to act the part. I could smell the smoky creamed ham croquetas from the kitchen, shaped in finger rolls, lightly breaded, and then lightly fried. Very little was deep-fried and there were few heavy or creamy sauces in the traditional Cuban cooking style but naturally I found and fell in love with the few that were. I always ended breakfast with a cortado and the check. Even though I'd spend the whole day having meetings at Versailles I'd pay for each meal one by one. It was my OCD. Must have jumped into my luggage before I left New York City a few years earlier.

The time of day between breakfast and lunch was a delicious gray area of pastelitos, croquetas, bocaditos, and empanadas or a media noche (that means midnight sandwich) - some sort of hearty meat with Swiss cheese and then topped with pickles and mustard on sweet egg bread. The midnight sandwiches were more addictive than the pseudoephedrine. Sometimes I'd have them bring out the congri before dinner. It was this white rice and black bean mixture that some people called "Moors and Christians", then came boniato in a garlic dressing, and maduros.

Next Up: Fin de siècle. The end of the century.

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You can hear me on two new podcasts this week, completely unrelated.

Issue Oriented # 42
Featuring FAKE PROBLEMS, GOOD OLD WAR, MANSIONS and, well, me.

ChickCast Episode # 32 May 6 Episode: Today we get nostalgic with an old friend from WNEW. You can also download & save it here

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Of course

Of course the watch I like in the men's fashion magazine is the $14,000 one. Of course we met at the Viceroy in Miami. Of course we had brunch at Arabelle every Sunday; mint juleps and blueberry buckwheat pancakes depending on the weather. For some reason she preferred french toast when it was raining. I must admit, she had a very cozy appetite. She'd wake up wanting everything from blueberry scones and ice cream cones to a B.L.T. or something from The Crêperie. Of course we took the long way home. I told the driver to take the week off. He always got us home too quick. Sometimes that was what we wanted but not today. Today she and I wanted to swim beneath the waterlogged branches in Central Park. We wanted to hear and feel the wet sky irrigate around us. The clouds were unwrapping themselves to bestow their gorgeous gift and the trees sounded like dogs lapping it up after a long walk on the third Thursday in July. Even Broadway felt boggy under foot. A marshy coastline of winding miry roads leading to the wet mucky sad-eyed lowland. There were the two tölts playing in the muddy barnyard, sloshing throught the quaggy terrain way over yonder by the sloughy edge of the pond like a barefoot hobo playing an old beat up Dobro over by the swampy bayous. Of course I had one half of the Ace of Hearts in my hat and the other in my wallet, dog-eared from prayers. You never know when a prayer might come true. They get all backed up in the system. You may still be waitin' on that one from when you were 5 and then one day BANG! It arrives! and you've forgotten all about it. That's what they really mean by "be careful what you wish for". It's a timing thing. It takes time. Like mom's sauce on Sundays. Of course there's no calendars or deadlines. It comes when it comes so be sure you pray for something really timeless and classic; something very necessary. Like a pair of tortoiseshell Wayfarers, a Roman numeral Swiss Made or an American pickup truck. You don't want your wishes to go out of style.

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Escape from The Coterie

“It's this intense desire of the puny human to pretend he has some sort of mastery over nature. People have always wanted to harness and tame the beast”, she said. And sure, what better way to do that than to make the animal in question part of the everyday components of domestic life... a refrigerator magnet or a shot glass for instance emblazoned with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Belittling and exploitative enough for you? (So, anyway) I was reading a laborious article on Charlson comorbidity, (when I) kissed her forehead and went to bed. She was already asleep. I took off my glasses, switched off the nightstand light and closed my heavy eyes. First dream had me hanging with these two. One couldn't feel her face, the other couldn't feel his legs. I wasn't buying it. Next I'm in a trailer park outside Gary, Indiana. The water was hard and sulfur was in the air. I knew it was real right away because that was Gary in a nutshell. Gary was famous for his steel mills, high crime rate, and Democrats. I remember writing in my diary that it was a sad place to die. Next thing I know I was ordering bacon and eggs and reading the Post-Tribune and the Crusader when she pulled up. It was as if she walked right out of Andy Warhol's coterie. Personally, I would have punched Andy in the face in a crowded nightclub so it would make the papers. By now the rain was falling light. I could hear it scattering on the white rocks. We started discussing Brooke Shields and Kathy Ireland. Suddenly we couldn't figure out who was who. I often had this problem with Bette and Barbra, alligators and crocodiles. They were all interchangeable. She laughed. The boardwalk wood groaned like an old boat. Her little heart was beating so very fast. As she'd grown older she'd grown more and more fearful of the rain. She used to hide in the bathroom like an earthquake. One ear up like a radar. An old professor of mine named Knapp was studying wildfires, 50 mph winds and how it all related to the psychology of rumors. It was farfetched, sure, but I knew he'd tie it all together in the end somehow. Everyone loves a common enemy. In the 80's the punks had Reagan. Now we had the Somali pirates, the swine flu and Bernie Madoff. “Suddenly there was a movement in the corner of the room but there was nothing I could do when I realized with fright that Spiderman was having me for dinner tonight!”. Could we build a house with bricks of Café Bustelo? I suppose but I don't want to break any hearts so I'll refrain from telling you the truth about the pagans and the holidays. Although I must tell you that Niagra Falls is just a giant computer regulated faucet. There isn't much natural left about it.

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Remake Of A Remake (Prequel to the Sequel)

Now that just about every goddamn comic book hero and old television show has been made, sorry, I mean "re-imagined" into a movie, Hollywood is betting on prequels. So now that we've replayed every scenario and put a few hundred million behind it we're rewinding the tape and running it up the proverbial flagpole again. The message is clear: Hollywood will bet on anything but an original idea.

Therefore I was quite surprised the other day to see a trailer for a somewhat original movie, "Julie & Julia". It is based on a book (Julia's memoir written with Alex Prud'homme, My Life in France) - but that wasn't enough. The movie execs were still afraid. So fearful at releasing an original movie they decided to awkwardly shove another story into the plot - a plot based upon another book. This one by Julie Powell, a blogger who tries to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in 365 days. Yeah, I was confused, too.

So, in the spirit of things, let us rerun some of the posts that have received the biggest response over the past year. The cult classics, if you will.

Foiled Again: NPR's Tweed Wall Of Silence

F DiFara's

Bring Me The Head Of George Oliphant

Enjoy.

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The Red Sedan

"Do you ever see a gallon of paint and you just wanna drink it?", thing is, I knew exactly what she meant. And yes, I had. It always looks so creamy and delicious. Too bad its paint. I was in between drags off an oddly shaped Malcolm Gladwell book when the cabbie asked me, "red sedan?" I had no idea what he was saying. And me saying "Excuse me?" only made him speak louder, not clearer. "Red Sedan!?", he asked adamantly. "RED SEDAN!", again. Me, I go "WHAT?!" Finally I realize he's saying, or trying to say, "Amsterdam" as in Amsterdam Avenue. "No", I said, "...between Broadway and Columbus." He just nodded his head and we collectively forgot about the confusing crimson chariot causing all the commotion. I started thinking about boxes inside boxes inside boxes and felt claustrophobic. Buried alive. Like the time we were in The Channel Tunnel. Inside a bunk inside a bus inside a train inside a tunnel 250 feet beneath the Strait of Dover. Talk about a Russian Doll. Who would even know where or how to find us? Where would they start digging? Just then I woke up outside the The Morgan Library and it was time to go.

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I would like to report one stolen heart still beating. And if everyone is ready allow me to start this meeting: I found myself inside fluorescent rainbows of oil and asphalt. Why there's a mansion now where the construction site sat near the big blue salt. Urban hearts make for a concrete affair with white orchids, porcelain skin and angel hair. She was carved from a bar of Dove and dipped in gold. Her hands hidden in my pockets love like a cathedral from the cold. She heard me open the window inviting the diehard freeze. She laughed and gasped tickled with my head between her knees. It was behind the hedges where our secret love began. It was behind the hedges we found our fingers on the same hand. It was behind the hedges where we laughed and sometimes cried. It was behind the hedges where our love sat up and came alive.

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