Til the Cows Come Home

The naturopathic doctor suggested I eliminate dairy for a couple of weeks to see if that's what's been causing some of my physical problems. In hindsight I realize agreeing to it was a big mistake, with me more stressed than ever, working harder than ever, and just not mentally strong enough to support eliminating one of my favorite things out of my life.
I've done detoxes before, eliminating alcohol and sweets and even eating in restaurants altogether, but the results are immediate: you lose a boatload of weight quickly. Eliminating dairy made me hungry, depressed, deprived, and crave other salty things like chips and fries to replace the cheese that would normally satisfy that.
I fell off the wagon a couple times - eating a little onion dip at Michelle's party last week, eating shepard's pie (made with grits instead of mashed potatoes) which had butter in it at Jimmy's No. 43 - but nothing major til Thursday night, when I sat down at Rodeo Bar and demanded steak soft tacos (cheese) and a big pile of sour cream. It had been a rough day.
Then last night, after managing to resist lunch at Murray's and cookies from Julian, I more than willingly ate dinner at Arturo's, my favorite pizza/Italian restaurant in the city. And it was a veritable cheese binge.
We had garlic bread with cheese, which I topped with parmesan cheese.
We had baked clams which most certainly had some kind of buttery garlic sauce with it.
We had arugula salad with big strips of parmesan laid across the top.
And we had the cheesy Fiesta pizza which I also topped with more parmesan cheese.
Most dairy I can go without. I don't drink glasses of milk, I don't really eat yogurt, I don't have butter or sour cream in my home...But once you start checking, you realize everything is made with some kind of dairy product. Whether it's butterfat or some isotrope of lactose or was just made on a machine that also processes dairy products, nearly every box listed "CONTAINS MILK" under the ingredients, or had a D on the front. And God only knows what restaurants use to make your food. Forget about it.
So when I was off dairy, I tried to find some replacements. I can't eat soy so the whole soy cheese / soy milk route was out of the question, but I did try rice milk. It sounds disgusting but I don't know, it's pretty good. I like it better than cow's milk. It's really good on cereal. But it's actually not that good for you, because it's basically carbs instead of protein. Argh.
I also discovered baking chocolate that's sweetened slightly but as no milk or butterfat in it. Pretty good and a little better for you. Definitely good for times I'm dieting and I fall off the wagon. But note: 100% cacao baking chocolate does not taste good by itself.
My "dairy fast," as I've been calling it, was supposed to end altogether on Monday, but I don't know if I'm even going to bother eliminating it for the rest of the weekend. This is just the worst time of year. And because I didn't feel one bit better off the dairy, there's really nothing encouraging me to keep depriving myself besides just stubbornness of doing what I said I was going to do.
I think in general cutting down on the amount of cheese in my life is a good thing, but again that's more for weight loss. My cholesterol is great and it seems like anything in moderation is probably OK.
The naturopath will still suspect I have a food allergy but I don't think I'm willing to cut out other foods people are commonly allergic to (wheat, tomatoes, eggs....).
Back to the drawing board.

Another Irate Cabbie

I LOVE the credit card machines in cabs. They're so convenient! But boy, do the drivers hate them.

I took a cab home tonight from Naked Angels mostly because it was cold out but also because I'm just so tired lately. When we got to my corner, I swiped my credit card with glee, and asked for the receipt (which the screen TELLS you to do).

The cab driver got really defensive immediately and started saying, "Just wait, just wait" and holding up his hand, like I was harrassing him or something.

When I asked him if there was a problem, he started going off about how long the credit card takes and how it "wastes three minutes."

I said, "It's not my fault. It's not my fault for taking advantage of a service that's being offered to me."

He snapped, "Yes! It IS your fault! You do not have cash for $6 cab ride and you make me wait for credit card!"

"Blame the Taxi & Limousine Commission," I said, and he handed me my receipt.

I opened the door, making sure that I would be able to safely exit the backseat (remembering my Saturday night). I then jutted my head through the partition in the bulletproof glass and I snarled, "Oh, and by the way, I did have the cash."

He started yelling at me but I'd already slammed the door and started sauntering away, so I couldn't hear his tirade.

And it's true. I did have the cash. But I need to save that for tipping bartenders and paying for cabs that don't take credit cards.

What Are You Gonna Do To Me?!

That's what I kept screaming at the taxi driver last night. Michelle and I had hopped in a cab after 2 a.m. on the Upper West Side to get a drink or two in at George's bar before last call, and the guy drove like a maniac the whole way. I was already feeling nauseous (from ending my dairy fast? from eating steak tartare?) and the ride made me carsick on top of everything, and extremely agitated.

I'm really into the new credit card swipe in taxis since I'm often short on cash, so I was glad to see that this cab was equipped with the new technology. When I first swiped, the driver said, "It's not working." A likely story - taxi drivers are notorious for trying to encourage you not to use the credit card payment, since they have to pay a fee for it. I had just been reading an article in Time Out about what your passenger rights are, so I wasn't about to give up.

Once I swiped and it went through, the driver started to say I had to sign the receipt. He gave me a pen, I looked at the receipt, and I said, "I don't have to sign this, here" and gave the pen back to him. The guy lept out of the front seat, ran around to the back right passenger seat where I was about to depart, and became very threatening - waving his arms around, pointing his finger at me, shouting, all right in front of the swank Bowery Hotel.

Of course, I wasn't having it. I got up in his face and said I wasn't a tourist and he wasn't going to intimidate me, if he had just been nice then we could have worked something out but now I wasn't going to do anything for him. He became more violent and threatening and we started to collect a crowd, notably a shivering girl who'd been waiting for a cab for a long time. I started to pick on her, shouting "Do you want this guy to drive you home? Do you trust this guy to get you where you need to go?" And then I went back to the driver, channeling a very Phil-like "Is that how you're going to act?"

And then because he wouldn't back down and because he was blocking me from leaving the backseat, I got up in his face and started growling, "What are you going to do to me?!"
When it comes down to it, you don't have to sign the receipt unless the trip is over $25 (which it wasn't). In the back of my mind at the time, I thought there was a chance I was wrong and that prior cab drivers had just never asked me to sign, because the whole thing is still new and we're all still getting used to it. And with the old credit card swipers (that weren't in many cabs at all), you did have to sign and you did have to tell the driver ahead of time that you were paying with credit card (you don't now). But I became so infuriated at the way he acted, the attack he engaged on me, thank God in a very public setting and not in the dark corners of, say, Greenpoint where I used to get chased down by cab drivers.

All that, for a dollar fee he thought he was not going to get reimbursed.

I think the shivering blonde girl took the cab after I walked away, but I departed so swiftly and determined that I didn't bother to look back and check. I even lost Michelle, who was so dumbfounded at what just happened that she didn't notice which way I walked and ended up wandering in the opposite direction.

It didn't occur to me at the time to take down the guy's medallion number. I could have reported him to 311. I could have sued him probably for harrassment and mental anguish (something I would love to do considering my recent escapades in the New York Small Claims Court system). But in the end, no harm done. Yelling at him totally dissipated my nausea and I was able to have a decent time for the rest of the night.

Black Friday

Instead of getting up for 4 a.m. doorbusters, I tried to sleep in today. But with my lower back hurting more and more every day, I can't get several hours of uninterrupted sleep anymore. Still, I was able to hang out in bed til 12:45 p.m., which is exactly what I was looking for.
Last year I went to the mall on Black Friday and marvelled at how empty it was, but this year there was no way I could haul myself out that far so I settled for some midtown shopping. On my way to Lord & Taylor, I stumbled upon a Bank of America-sponsored pop-up store on Fifth Avenue and 36th Street, where I got a free cup of coffee (with a splash of hot chocolate) and a free massage! They're also offering free gift wrap, free holiday greetings you can videotape in front of a green screen, and "concierge services" which they steered me away from since they could tell right away I was a local.

The massage was OK, in one of those massage chairs like they have at the nail salon, which sometimes actually make my back feel worse. But, you get what you pay for, and since it was free, I was trying to enjoy it as much as possible.

Bank of America is, of course, trying to get people to sign up for their new "Americard," but I think people are just drinking the free coffee and using the public bathrooms. I saw lots of people taking a load off and piling their shopping bags up on the couches, munching on the free chocolates, but nobody signing up for anything. Oh well, thanks Bank of America for a very expensive and enjoyable marketing promotion. 'Tis the season for giving.

Afterwards I was inspired to spend $75 at Ann Taylor LOFT to get a free sequined clutch purse, and to buy new jeans and a fancy dress at GAP.

Braving Herald Square on Black Friday stressed me out again so I stopped by HRC for a dip in the hot tub, and back home to eat a leftover turkey dinner.

I tried to go out last night, but nobody - not even Rodeo Bar - was accommodating a wayward soul such as myself on Thanksgiving night. I got a couple of drinks at The Magician, but it was nothing compared to Thanksgiving 1997 when I got drunk at Down the Hatch with Neal and was at the all-night McDonald's on W. 3rd St. til 5 a.m.

Oh well, at least I still have tonight and tomorrow before back to work on Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm thinking a lot about my family today. I haven't spoken to my parents since January but I normally wouldn't see them on Thanksgiving anyway. But as I'm hanging out in my apartment baking pumpkin bread and making green bean casserole, I'm reminded of my father's side of the family, big dinners at Grammy's house and weird German desserts.

I grew up with a lot of German vernacular that was poorly pronounced and never spelled out or written down. I've actually been a motivated baker lately (like baking my own birthday cake) so I set my mind to trying to track down recipes of some of the things I grew up eating that I actually liked. There were the molasses Christmas cookies that used to be my favorite, Lebkuchen, and an anise and nutmug dessert called Gesundheitskuchen which is more like a cake but is baked in a loaf pan and sliced like bread. None of the recipes I found online were exactly what I remembered, but I think I've become a good enough baker to fiddle around with the ingredients to try to replicate my grandmother's version, which had been replicated by my mother after she became absorbed into my father's traditional German family.

Especially after my grandmother died when I was 10, Thanksgiving (or any other holiday for that matter) with my family was never really about home and hearth. I do have fond memories of waking up to the smell of the turkey already cooking, of my father carving it and doling out the crispy skin for us to snack on, of eating whatever we wanted and as much as we wanted, all washed down with grape juice to mimic a sophisticated dinner experience. But mom always acted like it was a huge bother and never enjoyed herself, and made us feel guilty for all the effort she put into it. And it was almost always just the four of us, four people who didn't get along with each other, eating in silence.

Besides, this time of year, I am missing my father's brother, my favorite uncle. He died about a year ago at Thanksgivingtime and I still feel guilty for not going to Syracuse for the wake or funeral. I couldn't deal with seeing my parents. I hope, wherever he is, that he understands and forgives me.

I chose to spend today alone, despite a genuine invitation from Maria's family, because I've been too stressed at work, travelling too much for work, and not sleeping enough. I wasn't sure if I was going to cook and didn't want to have any plans today, but so far it's turning out ok. I'm cooking about half a turkey dinner, with turkey roulade contributed by Murray's, stuffing contributed by Edith, and green bean casserole and mashed potatoes made by me.

Van Halen

Van Halen is now 3/4 Van Halen, with the replacement of Michael Anthony with Eddie's son Wolfgang. Wolfgang doesn't really rock, but he's only 16. Still, he looks like Valerie Bertinelli before Jenny Craig. With her hair from One Day at a Time.

I never thought this before, but at the MSG show last night, I thought all Van Halen songs sound alike. Correction: all David Lee Roth Van Halen songs sound alike, at least performed live. I thought I would know more of them, but sticking to the Diamond Dave repertoire and leaving out the Sammy Hagar stuff limited my knowledge, so only about half the songs sounded familiar to me. Still, with Eddie's guitar and pretty good harmonizing vocals, they all had that Van Halen something that made me really enjoy the whole show.

We had terrible seats. Pretty awful, as in, the last row. The speakers blocked the big screen behind them so I couldn't even watch the show on that. But Roth, replete with a variety of brocade jackets and tophats, had an onstage demeanor that was more circus ringmaster than rock band lead singer, so I could definitely see him gesturing wildly and flipping around the mic stand like a baton.

Dave looks good. I know you won't believe me, but he does. He lost a lot of weight and looks pretty fit, and even his thinning hair was smartly cropped and neat. His wide smile and flamboyance makes him a great showman and draws the eyes to the face rather than to the laced-up crotch of his leather pants, but it was all a bit...Fosse.

And you know what? He can still do those jumping kicks. It was like 1984 all over again.

As a 9 year old I loved "Jump." I didn't understand it at all but I think I was kind of attracted to Dave's charisma, and at the time I couldn't resist a good synthesizer.

When I agreed to go to the show, I figured I would just get drunk and eat popcorn. I did have a couple Pork Slaps at Fat Annie's before the show, but I wasn't drunk. Instead, sitting in my seat, the fifth wheel to a married couple and a couple of dudes from work who are a little too friendly with each other, I just got depressed. I remembered myself as a 9 year old. And I felt old and sad.

Oh, I didn't feel pathetic for being at a Van Halen show (pretty cool actually). Everybody there was actually much older than me. It was more the comparison of my current self with my former third grader self, who loved Van Halen and Def Leppard and dreamed of dating a rock star one day. That hasn't happened yet.

The only Van Halen music I own is from the Sammy Hagar era, but I do own a David Lee Roth solo album on vinyl. I don't think I'll ever play any of that stuff at home, but I have been humming "Dance the Night Away" to myself today...

Detroit Rock Sandi

I had to work again this weekend, this time travelling to my second least favorite city in the U.S.: Detroit. (Houston is my least favorite.)

This is the second city where I've seen the KIDZ BOP WORLD TOUR so far, and fortunately I didn't have to do a lot. But still, I left my house at 2:45 p.m. on Saturday and didn't return til about an hour ago - and after working til 8 p.m. on Friday night and too tired to go out after, that's pretty much the whole weekend.

It's a surprisingly quick flight out there, on a cramped regional jet. I was lucky to be travelling with Sebouh and Kevin, and we all ventured out to Dearborn for an authentic Lebanese dinner. At Al-Ameer, I felt like I was back in the 70s at a family dining restaurant, with stained glass chandeliers in every booth. Except Seb was speaking Arabic to our waitress and half the food was on a stick.

It was great, actually. Seb is our resident Lebanese expert (despite my jaunt to Edgware Road with Claude Chalhoub in 2002) so I let him order for me, getting a nice selection of kabob and shwarma, hummous, salads, rices, falafel, and plenty of stuff to dip it in (like tahini and lebneh, sometimes called "yogurt cheese" and really good). Topped off with some baklava and I had a happy tummy ache.

I was going to go to bed early, but my hotel - the Atheneum, where I stayed the last time work brought me to Detroit about eight years ago - was recently part of a revitalization of Downtown Detroit to include a new casino as part of Greektown. Curiosity got the best of me and I braved the cigar smoke to walk through the entire thing and even play some slots. Competitiveness also got the best of me and I dropped some serious $20s in the PONG-themed slot machine just trying to get to the bonus round where you actually get to play PONG for cash. Silly me - I always forget you can't play slots like they're video games. They're WAY too expensive.

So after losing a wallet-full of money, and being disgusted at how NOT-nice the casino was (and didn't even pretend to be like the Atlantic City casinos do), I headed back to the hotel to do what I'd been dreaming about ever since I booked the room: take a bubble bath in the "deep soak tub." The rooms are sort of Greek-themed like the rest of the hotel (and the neighborhood), so there's a certain hedonism you feel when you walk in. It's not as bad as Caesar's, but I definitely wanted to take advantage while I was there, especially with the way I've been feeling lately.

Sipping some white wine while listening to Mariah Carey was all the relaxation I needed to get ready to work the next day...

This morning I woke up early on my own after hoping to sleep in, but that meant I could forage for breakfast in the very dead downtown area. I found the Detroit Breakfast House & Grill, the only hoppin' spot for miles, at about the moment I was going to give up and go to Au Bon Pain. It's definitely a hometown favorite, filled with post- and/or pre-church worshippers nattily dressed, surrounding themselves with stuffed French toast, chicken and waffles, and cheese grits. I went a little easy on myself and had the turkey sausage benedict, which still came out on a really buttery grilled English muffin with some slippery breakfast potatoes on the side. My first batch of poached eggs came out hard - and the waitress knew that was bad so she put them down and took them right back, apologizing all over the place. When the new wet eggs came out and burst all over my plate, I knew it was worth the wait.

It was a little unnerving because everybody there called me "young lady," but when they could see I was all by myself and I was nice about the hard eggs and the wait (and I think I was a little sniffly too with a cold weather scratchy throat), they started calling me "sweetheart." That was some hospitality I had never before experienced in Detroit.

I had a good full stomach in anticipation of drinking mimosas at the pre-show reception we threw for our colleagues at Dodge, who sponsored the show at the overly-ornate Fox Theatre. The Byzantine gaudiness of the place really overwhelmed my interest in its history - apparently built by the Fox movie studio in the '20s as a movie theater. The live acts that play there now are mostly of the "heritage artist" variety, like Neil Young last night and Kenny Rogers in December. KIDZ BOP really livened up the place. I was still hoping for more confetti.

Back home now to an undecorated apartment, with all Halloween decorations down (except the candy corn lights) and a little too early for the Christmas stuff to go up. I'm always looking for a little more sparkle. And the face painter at the party today told me I wasn't allowed because I'm an adult.

*sulk*

Duran Duran on Broadway

About 1000 middle-aged women, gay men and myself lived out a childhood fantasy last night and saw Duran Duran in the small Barrymore Theater on Broadway.

I'd seen them a year or two ago at The Garden, but at this show we were close, in the third row in the balcony. John Taylor actually raised his eyebrows at me and the screaming woman next to me.

It was a gamble to go see this show because the main focus is their new album, but I was intrigued by its production by Timbaland and collaborations with Justin Timberlake. Still, does anybody want to hear new music by Duran Duran?

The new stuff is pretty good. About half of it I actually really liked upon first listen. Some of it screams JT, and I kept hoping they'd break out into a cover of "Sexyback."

Like any Broadway show, there was an intermission, and the show was actually split into three acts. Act One was the new stuff, and Act Two was a special Devo-like "Electroset" where they lined up downstage with keyboards and did robotic versions of "All She Wants Is," "I Don't Want Your Love" (!!!!), and a weird electro remix of "Skin Trade."

Act Three was what they called "Essential Duran Duran," though I don't consider their relatively recent single "Reach Up for the Sunrise" essential despite the fact it was in a commercial or two. Still, I was happy to jump to my feet for "Notorious" and "The Reflex," and bounce around to "Planet Earth" and "Girls on Film." I'm betting the audience was disappointed they didn't hear "Rio" (I personally was hoping for Arcadia's "Election Day") but instead they got "A View to a Kill" (the James Bond theme) and "Ordinary World."

The band looks good and they had nice matching outfits, though Simon was the only one with a huge bulge in his pants. The addition of a horn section (saxophone solos!) and a soulful backup singer really filled out the sound, and in that intimate setting, it sounded great.

I kind of want to go again.

Thru 11/13.

Duran Duran Continues Its Revival With a Debut on a Broadway Stage - The New York Times

Halloweentime Jaunt to the Midwest

Spent the weekend in Minneapolis - again - this weekend. I actually don't mind it so much. I tell everybody it's a surprisingly cosmopolitan place.

This time I stayed at the Hilton, which was a mistake because it was a prime convention spot crawling with badge-toting midwesterners and gigantic football players (North Dakota State U, to be exact). I was pressed up against the back of the elevator during each trip to and from the 21st floor, praying for oxygen.

The stress of the throngs needed desperately to be relieved, so I ordered an in-room massage from the former LiteSpa (now an Aveda salon called Sanctuary). Spa services outside of a beach cabana or New York City can be a bit dodgy, but this ended up being really good - in fact, I think, better than the massages I get from Deborah at Crunch. This one included a great head/scalp massage, and also uncovered some real pain I'm having...drum roll...behind my knees. In the lymph area. Apparently I'm clogged.

So the massage was a great release in more ways than one, and for the first time in weeks (maybe months), I woke up the next morning and could walk without hobbling. Score!

Besides the access to in-room massages, the one good thing about the hotel was its proximity to a great restaurant called Hell's Kitchen, a new discovery. Aptly named, the wait there is hellish, as is the attitude of the people taking reservations and names for the waitlist. Saturday I tried to go there three times, and finally ordered a ham and pear toasted sandwich to go and ate it on the stairwell in the building. But this morning I planned ahead and didn't have to wait too long to brunch with Sebouh, who shared the delicious sausage bread (made with bison meat!), topped with butter, homemade peanut butter and preserves. It's practically a meal on its own but I managed to make some room for the catfish breakfast special, with poached eggs and a sauce with a real kick to it.

Minneapolis always brings the good food and drink, if you know where to go. (DON'T go to the NewsRoom.) We tried the bar in the new swank Graves 601 hotel, where I had the deliciously unsweet Mojito "8" cocktail and some sweet grilled cheese sandwiches topped with truffle honey. The scene was weirdly New York, and we were surrounded by Emmy winners of the Upper Midwest Chapter of the National Television Academy. Bizarre.

Even more bizarre was our trip to the sticks for the Trail of Terror, supposedly the Midwest's best Halloween attraction. It paled in comparison to some of the New York area ones I've visited over the last couple of years, but the haunted house-slash-maze had some neat tricks of its own that kept me on my toes (and grabbing for Vic). They kept it really dark, and with my night vision pretty bad as it is, I was blind the whole time. Then we hit the hallway with the big horn sound and a bright light that bleached our retinas and really blinded us.

I can't say it was worth the long drive, the muddy school bus ride from the parking lot, and the long wait in line, but I was spooked and startled and we laughed a lot. Mission accomplished.

It also gave us the excuse to have dinner at Bennigan's, which we spotted from the highway. We were hungry for fun, and thanks to Vic, now I can say I've tasted the deep fat fried and battered Monte Cristo sandwich with raspberry jam. It's so wrong. And so good.

Thankfully, considering everything I ate while away, I got the chance to swim a little at my hotel. I also spent a fair amount of time on my feet walking back and forth between hotel and Target Center, where I was wrangling some children for the KIDZ BOP WORLD TOUR. Rock!

If I have to go back to Minneapolis again, I hope it's during better weather, so I can visit De Smet, SD and complete my Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway journey.

Photo Essay: Great Jack o’ Lantern Blaze

I guess it's a family event, but since I didn't have any kids to bring, I dragged Edith, Eric, Michelle and Joe an hour upstate to Croton-on-Hudson for the annual Great Jack o' Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor (follow the brown signs).

The manor itself - which you can tour throughout the year during the day - was pretty spooky, with illuminated pumpkins lining its railings and the colored spotlight changing periodically.

Skeletor made sure we didn't get lost through the winding paths...

Some really elaborate designs...

It takes about an hour to go through the whole thing depending on how stuck you get behind the kids in the "Dead Sea" section, but you can grab a hot cider and a cider doughnut on your way in, and it's a pleasantly spooky way to spend a crisp fall evening.

Through October 31.