One of the first restaurants I frequented when I moved to New York [mumble-mumble] years ago was a place called Acme on Great Jones Street in the East Village. It served southern/New Orleans favorites. Catfish po’ boys. Fried chicken. Collard greens. Red beans and rice. It had a nice selection of brews. The food was comforting and the price was conducive to my new-to-New York broke ass. Downstairs was a performance space called Under Acme where I spent many, many nights watching my musician friends perform in their bands. Unlike most New York restaurants, Acme lasted for years.

A few months ago it was closed and gutted. The new owners just reopened it under the same name. Jay Cheshes, the restaurant reviewer for TimeOut New York, called the new owners “cool-kids” and gave it four out of five stars. It now serves “cutting-edge New Nordic cuisine” (whatever the hell that is) and has a “hot crowd” and is a “chic downtown bistro.”

They ruined it. The average main course is now $25 and the menu includes items like bison tartare. That sounds appetizing, doesn’t it? For desert, you can order a Danish doughnut for $10.

In the review my old, fond, warm memories were disparaged as being from a place that was “once-grungy,” “…a former Cajun dive…” and “…a downtown dump.” I fucking hate New York snobs and New York food snobs are the worst of the worst. They’re worse than New York fashion snobs, and that’s saying plenty. Scratch the surface of any foodie and underneath you’ll find a pretentious bore who couldn’t tell the difference between expensive wine and ripple in a blind taste test.

I was walking up Sixth Avenue yesterday afternoon and saw who was the current tenant at Radio City Music Hall:

Rush! A blast from my teenage past! I began listening to Rush as an act of rebellion. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, hated them. The media hated them. Radio ignored them. Everyone in school hated them. My brother hated them. Their cool-quotient was sub-zero. They got no respect. So I decided to be “different” and follow the band. But I soon discovered that they were masters of their instruments and never wrote songs about obsessing over a broken heart, which I found refreshing. I started enjoying their work for more legitimate reasons. Their music was smart and complicated.

I haven’t seen them for many, many years and I thought it might make for an enjoyable stroll down memory lane to see them perform in one of the most architecturally beautiful buildings in all of Manhattan.

Then I turned the corner.

D’oh! Not these guys:

These guys:

It’s March. Do you know what that means? That means we escaped winter unscathed. After two cataclysmic winters when we were pounded with one city-closing blizzard after another, we deserved the reprieve. Naturally, the kiddies were disappointed but I didn’t mind one bit. That’s how you can tell you’ve become an adult. Winter isn’t fun anymore. We had exactly ONE snowfall. I suppose we can still get a late season surprise, but overall we got off easy.

It may have been only one snowfall, but we made the best of it. Please spare me your sarcastic witticisms regarding my camera skills. I know I fucked up the orientation. I was too busy concentrating on not dropping my iPhone and coming to a halt in a safe spot. Mush, indeed!

What the hell is this supposed to mean?

Japan week runs from the 1st through the 3rd? Have any of you been to Japan? Are the weeks there measured out in 72-hour increments? Advertising fail. I may walk over to Grand Central on my lunch hour to take this in. I have an affinity for Japan.

I turned off the word verification requirement in the comments section. Blogger has initiated a new WV system that I find both cumbersome and annoying. I wanted to save you, gentle reader, the hassle. But I reserve the right to reactivate it if I’m suddenly flooded with spam about hating American women.

I feel pretty,
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn’t me tonight.

I got got an extraordinarily short haircut on Saturday. Much shorter than what I’m used to. On the way home, I was looking at it in the rear view mirror and thought I looked a bit like a convict. I dismissed my critique and thought, who’s going to pay any mind? Who’s going to care?

I walked in the house and 10-Year Old Daughter, literally, stopped dead in her tracks and said, “OH, MY GOD! You look so WEIRD!” Knowing how vain I am, Mrs. Wife immediately sprung into damage control mode but it’s no use. Kids speak the truth.

I now spend my time tugging on my hair, trying to get it to grow quicker by pulling it out of its follicles. It’s a losing game.

I meditated on this latest deformity and realized that although I am fit and healthy in the broad sense of the term, I have a host of annoyances that are indicative of growing older. To wit:

• The day after I go for a run, the bottom of my right heel hurts. I’m hoping it’s because I run in old shoes and that it’s not something more serious, like a bone spur. Whatever the hell that is.

• When I walk up a flight of stairs, my knees crackle like a bowl of Rice Krispies right after you pour milk on them. No pain to report.

• I pulled my left groin muscle last summer. It still hurts during my pre-workout stretching routing. Otherwise, I don’t notice it so much.

• I used to be able to drink coffee by the potful. Before we were old enough to get into bars, we’d sit in coffee shops and consume inhumane quantities. Today, my digestive system cannot cope with more than a cup or two per day.

• My left shoulder has slight pain. I think it’s because of the ergonomics (or lack thereof) of my desk space at work.

• I don’t know if it’s the lighting or the monitor but if I work on our PC desktop at home for more than, say, :20 minutes, I’ll get a massive throbbing headache and my eyeballs will pound for days afterwards. Each beat of my heart is a punch in the head. This is a serious problem.

• My right hand used to cramp up into a claw because of carpal tunnel but I taught myself to manipulate a mouse with my left hand, so this is no longer an issue. I’m not sure what I’ll do if my left hand decides to shut down.

I may have a murderously short haircut but at least it’ll all eventually grow back (albeit, with a little more grey than I would like). So I’ve got that going for me.

mul·li·gan. Noun. Golf. A shot not counted against the score, permitted in unofficial play to a player whose previous shot was poor.

Whitney Houston was a daughter of New Jersey, so her passing was big news out here. Her funeral became a cause célèbre. Who got to go? Did you hear who performed? Jessie Jackson made sure he got some face time in front of a camera. The governor got into hot water for ordering the state flag to be flown at half mast. Traditionally, that’s an honor reserved for men and women in uniform who gave their lives for God and country, not drug addled celebrities who were blessed with angelic voices. People are heaping damnation on Bobby Brown but I’ve read that he and Whitney were two of a kind and that she is not blameless.

Speaking of God, angelic voices and damnation.

Whitney was a woman of the church and to me, it looks like Jesus bailed out on the poor thing when she needed Him most. I’m sure she prayed for strength but her prayers fell on deaf ears. Of course, nobody in their right mind would say such a thing in public. Whitney exercised her free will and was taken by satanic forces. God had nothing to do with that part of her life. But I’ve read over and over that her beautiful singing voice was a gift from God. He gave that to her. As is usually the case, God gets all of the credit, but none of the blame. You’ll never get as sweet a deal.

During Houston’s service at the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, it was reported in the paper that choir sang, “God is working a miracle!“ A women in the rear of the church shouted, “Jesus!” What miracle?! The only miracle I see is that people are still giving money to the church.

I occasionally walk past the Seventh Day Adventist Church on 45th Street.

That’s their primary message for me? Fear God? Is that what He wants? You could write this off as hyperbolic Seventh Day Adventist rhetoric but, to me, the message is universal. All organized religions of all sects, all beliefs, preach fear and obedience. The Catholics just added this pleasantry to the Confiteor portion of the mass:

…through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault (striking your chest three times)…

Its intention is to convey a more humble, sorrowful attitude toward God. This is the oldest trick in the book. In the military they do it in boot camp. In fraternities it’s called hazing. It’s at the core of most theologies. You are torn down and made to feel lowly and unworthy, and then rebuilt. You feel gratitude towards your tormentors—the very people who damned you—for making you feel whole again.

The Italian government is going after the Vatican. The church is going to have to start paying taxes on its properties that are used for commercial purposes. Spain and Greece are also looking at this proposal in order to collect badly needed revenue. It’s about time. Godspeed to them.

I was on my midday stroll and came across this dude just off of 5th Avenue on 55th Street:

I love performance art. Even bad performance art. What they often get away with is classifying the aspects of a piece that don’t work as part of the performance and are de facto “intentionally” bad. It’s not honest, but it’s entertaining.

Kooky old Maria Abramovic is transforming a former tennis center in upstate New York into a permanent performance art space. Some of the pieces she plans may last several hours or several DAYS. According to the report I read, because of the length of some of these pieces, the space will feature:

…customized chairs complete with wheels. Those who fall asleep will be rolled into a special sleeping area – considered part of the performance – and rolled back when they awaken.

If your audience falls into such a deep slumber that they can actually be rolled away in a chair without being woken, it’s not part of the piece. Your piece is boring. Can you imagine if someone dies during the performance?! She might consider it the ultimate compliment.

Richard III coda: nursemyra was correct in that Spacey hammed it up quite a bit. But aside from a few lines that would have been better spoken than shouted, I thought his performance achieved a rare greatness. In the final scene, while the newly crowned king, Henry VII, was giving his exit speech, Richard, dead and bloody, hung by his ankles about 15 feet above the stage. You can’t be more dedicated to your performance than that! The theater critic for The New York Times called it a “gimmick” but I thought the whole thing was a lush spectacle and I’ll never forget it.

The play ran so late that there was no public transport back to New Jersey so I stayed in a hotel. I had forgotten what it’s like to sleep in Manhattan. At 12:47 a.m. (I know because I looked), a garbage truck threw its gears into reverse and I was startled awake by the loud beep-beep-beep-beep back-up signal. I was on the 26th floor but it sounded like they were right outside my window. At that exact moment, the toilet in my bathroom flushed itself! I’m not kidding! I was in a quasi-dream state and imagined one of the garbage truck drivers walking out of my bathroom fastening his pants. And then there was a loud cacophony of gears grinding, a dumpster being hoisted up off the ground, upended, and slammed back down onto the pavement. I had to get out of bed and jiggle the handle to get the damn toilet to stop flushing.

The city that never sleeps.