food blogging

DIY hot sauce.  In an effort to escape or at least slowly choke off my addiction to politics I am reading blogs on other subjects.  Food blogging is awesome and this NYT blog is cool, so I have added it to the blogroll.

in praise of subtle remonstrance*

This seems like a good idea.  

So the other day, when a stroller-pushing mother semi-vigorously bumped into me at Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street — this corner is apparently the Bermuda Triangle of manners — I expressed remorse, and added, “No one says I’m sorry anymore, so I do it for them.”

“O.K..”

“My idea is that if I say I’m sorry, then at least the words have been released into the universe.”

She stared at me with equal parts irritation and faint horror, as if I had just asked her to attend a three-hour lecture on the history of the leotard.

I continued: “The apology gets said, even if it’s not by the right person. It makes me feel better. And maybe you’ll know what to say next time.”

“Wow,” she said. (The tickets for the leotard lecture were $200, or $500 at the door.)

And then, finally, came the words I have longed these many months to hear: “I’ll think about it.”

I think I will give it a try.

*I promise no more NYT links today I just couldn't help it.

things i didn't know about something i thought i knew all about*

Burroughs and Kerouac wrote a book together in 1945.  I am a huge fan of the Beat writers so I am surprised I had not heard of this book.  Apparently it was not very good.

None of these one-dimensional slackers are remotely interesting as individuals, but together they give the reader a sense of the seedy, artsy world Kerouac and Burroughs inhabited in New York during the war years. And so these, really, are the only reasons to read this undistinguished book: for the period picture it provides of the city — think of Billy Wilder’s “Lost Weekend” crossed with Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” — and for the semi-autobiographical glimpses it offers of the two writers before they found their voices and became bohemian brand names.

*alternate title: I should read the NYT more or I will lose my cultural-elistist-amerikkkahating card.