Monthly Archives: December 2017

New York Mysteries Dec. 24- Dec. 30

Judson Memorial Church rang with the Christmas  carols at the Christmas eve Dec. 24 service. The Sunday School children created the 57 page Christmas Eve 2017 Picture Songbook. It’s filled with pictograms illustrating the songs’ lyrics. We sang our way through ten carols. During the singing of the last carol, Silent Night, the congregation held lit candles.

 

O Little Town of Bethlehem
Oh Come, All, Ye Faithful!

 

Adeste fideles

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Haneke’s Happy End was at Film Forum. It stars Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant. What an odd story. A young girl kills her mom, tries to kill herself and in the last scene assists grandpa into a river to drown himself.

I’m always amazed when Governor Cuomo does anything humane. Ravi Ragbir, Executive Director of New Sanctuary, said, “Immigrants are the scapegoats getting blamed for many perceived or real ills of this country. They are not perfect and make mistakes, but it does not mean that they should be punished for the rest of their lives. I am glad that Governor Andrew Cuomo understands the promise of immigrants who want to better their lives, their families and their communities.”

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

New York Mysteries Dec. 16 – Dec. 23

A friend and I met at Rosemary’s on Greenwich Avenue. Since I arrived first, I ordered Negronis, his favorite aperitif. Forget that. Rosemary’s serves only beer and wine. But what wine. One of the owners suggested we try Terlaner since we were having some prosciutto and focaccia followed by the linguini with preserved lemon (what’s that?) and for dessert, yummy affogato. A lovely early supper.

 

 

A delicious white wine

Grazie is a cozy, well run restaurant steps away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Getting a dinner reservation near the Met at this time of year is almost impossible. We settled on 5 p.m. so we could have plenty of time to get to The Met’s New York Baroque Incorporated. It was a mostly French evening. It began with the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully, an Italian born composer who worked at Louis XIV’s court. It was followed by Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes and George Frideric Handel’s Suite from Terpsichore. The music was wonderful, the period dancing so-so and the incorrect Met directions frustrating.

Judson Memorial Church is on a roll. It’s thrilling to be in a packed church. One of the main reason is the music. Judson has always had a strong musical tradition and the not so new music director, Henco Espag lives up to the tradition.

Judson Memorial Church

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-four-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

New York Mysteries Dec. 9 – Dec. 15

What do Jack Ruby, Black Rabbit, The Smuggler, have in common? They’re Minetta Tavern house cocktails of course.  A friend and I made our annual Christmas pilgrimage to the jam-packed steak house on MacDougal.  Shrouded in darkness on a south-west corner, you open an anonymous door, walk through a tiny, bleak 1930’s antechamber, pushes aside some very black curtains and you’re in. You better have a reservation unless you’re willing to wait 45 minutes for a place at the bar.  And this was a Tuesday evening. I found out later that The Black Rabbit was the restaurant’s original name and that the owner Eve Adams had another MacDougal restaurant down the block, now called La Laterna di Vittorio.  We sat across from the bar and had a view of the caricatures, some by Franz Kleine, and the Millennials clustered around the bar. I had to have a Tom Collins and the marrow bones, then on to other cholesterol challenging treats. Such fun.

 

MINETTA TAVERN

 

 

I saw Bombshell: The Hedy LaMarr Story at IFC. It’s a terrific documentary. Hedwig Eva Kiesler (1914-2000) was born in Vienna. She appeared in the nude in an early Austrian film, Ecstasy, which caught the attention of Louis B. Mayer who was in Vienna. After a failed audition, the soon to be Hedy LaMarr travelled to NYC on the same ocean liner as Mayer. He agreed to sign her to a contract and looking at the ocean, changed her name to Hedy LaMarr. She was a very beautiful woman who invented an instrument used but not paid for by the U. S. navy. At MGM she starred in adventurous epics that seem ludicrous today. The documentary is narrated by her son, Anthony Loder. He’s articulate and personable. Loder explains how his mother fell prey to pills. Like so many other actors, she worked like a race horse. She kept up by devouring pills to sleep and pills to wake up. She also fell prey to the miracle of plastic surgery. By the time she died, she was disfigured. I wonder if she was ever interviewed by Hedda Hopper, a gossip columnist of the 1940’s. If so, it could have taken place at Minetta Tavern.

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

New York Mysteries Dec. 3 – Dec. 7

The Butcher’s Daughter is a cute restaurant on Hudson. It’s cosy and friendly with great service and beautiful food presentation. I met a friend for breakfast. I had soft boiled eggs and soldiers – Get the cute angle? My friend doesn’t eat meat but he likes to eat meat substitutes with meaty names. He had the beet bacon.

 

Mystery Non Meat

 

Last Sunday the Frick Music Room resounded with the glorious music of the London Handel Players. We had an early evening concert devoted to Handel and Telemann. In addition to mailing the concert tickets, the Frick includes a description of a piece in the Collection that has a connection to the music of the evening. William Hogarth’s Miss Mary Edwards is an eighteenth century oil. Currently, it hangs in the Frick’s east gallery. Miss Mary Edwards could have heard the same music we heard as she sat in a box in a concert hall. One of the wealthiest women in eighteenth century England, Miss Edwards destroyed her marriage documents and had her son declared illegitimate after discovering that her husband was gambling away her fortune at the gaming tables. In Hogarth’s portrait, she pats her dog. Behind her is a bust of Queen Elizabeth as well as a copy of the Queen’s speech to the the troops setting off to the Armada. And we think we live in exciting times.
Juilliard is a source of superb events at very reasonable prices. Recently, my friend and I heard the Juilliard String Quartet. We also attended a wonderful evening of dance presented by the classes of 2018 through 2021.

William Hogarth’s Miss Mary Edwards

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.

New York Mysteries Nov. 19 – Nov. 25

 

Bloody but unbowed! My beloved blog was down for a few days but with the help of a great computer guy, GoDaddy and $, it’s up and running.

The Frick Collection’s Great Bustard 

 

The Van Kuijk Quartet was founded in 2012. In its N. Y. debut, the quartet delighted the Frick Music Room audience with three 20th century works and one eighteenth century work. We were treated to Mozart’s Quartet no. 19 in C Major, Janacek’s Kreutzer Sonata and Ravel’s Strong Quartet in F Major. For an encore, the quartet performed a Poulenc waltz. The Frick mails the concert tickets for each concert and includes a little art appreciation comparing Frick art with the featured music. The Great Bustard, a porcelain animal molded at the Meissen factory in 1732, was featured for this concert. It was to have been part of a menagerie of life-size animals for Augustus II.

A friend and I circled around the BAM area in search of Prospect Restaurant at 773 Fulton. Unlike in Manhattan, where the even numbers correspond with the odd numbers across the street, the numbers on one side of Fulton do not correspond with the numbers across the way. Put it down to Brooklyn whimsy. Prospect was delightful and efficient. A staff member had called me earlier to confirm the reservation and had asked if we were going to the theater. She promised and delivered that they would have us done and dusted by 7:15 so we could make the David Sedaris show.
David Sedaris and two advance men gave a full two hours of often amusing anecdotes to a packed house. Theft By Finding, his new book, was piled high in the Peter Jay Sharp lobby all ready to be sold and signed. Scatology: the biologically oriented study of excrement. I have included this definition because, unfortunately, it was one of Sedaris’s main topics.

I was listening to a BBC essay about the Bronte Sisters love of music and this illustration popped up. Feel free to frame it.

The 11 Stages of Womanhood. Feel free to frame this.

 

 

 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.