It’s kind of a scattershot entry today; the job is alternating between “very busy” and “very slow, but alert to the possibility of very busy,” so a cohesive piece is not happening. Instead, I’ve put together a list of things I’ve really liked lately, partly because I just watched In Cold Blood yesterday but the exegesis of that movie and Capote is going to have to wait, but mostly because, when you compliment a woman’s shrunken cord blazer on the elevator, some women will smile and say “thanks,” and some women will smile, say “thanks,” tell you where they got it, draw you a map of the store, write out the URL of an overstock site in case the store doesn’t have your size, scribble down three shirts they saw that would look cute on you and with the cord blazer, and ask where you got that chunky necklace, and also whether you would consider participating in an informal poll regarding wedge footwear. Hey, women’s fashion is a formidable opponent; we’ve all got to work together, is my thinking.

Don’t give a crap about women’s fashion? How about cereal? Do you give a crap about cereal? Because if you do, have I got a cereal for you, and if you don’t, you will, after you try Yogurt Burst Cheerios. I love that cereal so much, I put it in the will. I have no idea what prompted me to buy it; in fact, I have no idea what I was doing in the cereal aisle in the first place, because I don’t really eat cereal unless it’s the portable snacky kind where you can just sit on the couch with the box and eat it with your hands, and I definitely never “fix” myself a bowl with milk. Oh, wait, I remember now — I’d wandered over there to look for Cracklin’ Oat Bran, which the Associated did not have anywhere in their Forbidding Wall O’ Cereal, so I looked for that Special K with the strawberries because I’d been curious about that for a while, but I got distracted by the YBCs. It didn’t hurt that the box made the yogurt-covered Cheerios look like tiny little donuts. Imagine my joy when the yogurt-covered Cheerios tasted like tiny little donuts as well! Tiny little strawberry-glazed donuts! So good! I ate the whole box in two days, and when I returned to the store, they had run out of the strawberry, so I tried the vanilla. Just as good! And for those of you who do take your cereal with milk, I bet that the little yogurty donutty Cheerios melt into the milk and sweeten it up, all the better for drinking straight from the bowl. I will conclude by saying that, because it’s Cheerios, you can feel virtuous and oat-bran-tastic about eating three bowls. (…Probably.)

Also delicious snacking: Barnum’s Animal Crackers. The box is adequate, but even better is the annoyingly spelled but exceedingly handy Snak Sak, which gives you three times as many animals but cuts the staleness in half. Some might argue that part of the point of animal crackers is that aged chewy quality, and I would have agreed with you…until the Snak Sak. A blind taste test of gorillas from both animal-cracker delivery systems, conducted in the office last week, supported my contention that a fresher animal cracker is superior. (Also recommended: the off-brand non-Nabisco animal crackers, which I think are made by Bahlsen, except Bahlsen has to call them “fauna cookies” or something so as not to infringe on Nabisco’s trademark. The animal cracker is more like a tea biscuit, less cakey, but excellent with a retro soda like Fresca or Tab.)

Speaking of which, mmm, Tab. Apparently, New York City has a whole Tab grey market and people line up outside the Gristede’s at five in the morning so they can buy ten cases. It’s crazy. I don’t have nearly that strong an allegiance to it — fortunately, since if that grey market thing is true, the Tabophiles aren’t leaving very many for the rest of us — but I got one with lunch last week, and from the reaction it got out of my co-workers, you’d have thought I’d gotten off the elevator in an Edsel. You know what else is crazy? It’s the only soda on the shelf that hasn’t change its packaging one iota. Same acid pink can, same loopy seventies-PBS font. Same taste, too, pretty much, although it seems sweeter now…but then, so does Diet Coke, comparatively. I remember drinking a can of DC the week it came out and it tasted like the smell of brass polish.

Coke in a glass bottle hasn’t changed, though. It always tastes so perfectly crisp, sweet but with a bit of an afterburn, and it always touches off the same discussion when two people are drinking it at the same time, to wit: the ranking of the Cokes. Coke from a plastic bottle is at the bottom, Coke in a can one step up from that, but then it’s a fight between fountain Coke in a wax cup with ice (shaved, not cubed) and Coke in a glass bottle. I personally would give fountain Coke the edge, and I can tell you that nothing but nothing killed a Meisterbrau hangover deader on a Friday morning in Harry’s Luncheonette than a tomato and cheese omelet, a fist of home fries, and the biggest cup of fountain Coke with shaved ice in the place. Heaven in a vinyl booth, it was. But on the other hand, the best Coke I think I ever had, I drank out of a glass bottle. It was on the way to the cottage my parents used to rent in Maine, and that area is more built up and suburban now, but back then, the last hour of the trip was unpaved roads, and we stopped at a general store to pick up supplies. Our car then had air conditioning, but it didn’t do much, and it was dusty, and my parents didn’t ordinarily let me drink soda but I guess after nine hours in the car they felt I’d earned a Coke. We each got one, in the old-school 12-ounce bottles. My dad cracked it open for me on a bottle opener nailed to the front porch of the store, which I thought was nifty, and I had to hold the bottle with both hands because it had gotten all humid on the outside, and what a revelation that Coke was. It tasted like a breeze and my birthday. I loved it immediately and without complications. It’s a good thing Ma didn’t buy it as a rule, or I wouldn’t have had a tooth in my head by the time I turned ten. Good stuff.

One last food thing. Kohinoor heat-and-eat Indian meals rock my world. All vegetarian, all delicious, just throw some rice on the stove and a Kohinoor packet in the microwave and in twenty minutes it’s like a restaurant. The astronaut packaging is maybe a little scarier than is strictly necessary, but who cares.

Perhaps you might care to cleanse the palate with a piece of Dentyne Ice Vanilla Chill. For the record, I loathe the Dentyne Ice ad campaigns — he’s trying to play pool, lady, so stop breathing on him, jeez. Also for the record, I bought the Vanilla Chill by mistake, thinking it was standard-issue peppermint (or “Subzero Mint,” or whatever — I don’t love the naming conventions at Dentyne either). Also also for the record, the lemon version of Vanilla Chill is deeeee-sgusting. The first half-second it’s in your mouth, it’s lemony and minty, but then it turns on you like that and you’ve got a mouthful of original-scent Lysol. (Yes, I actually tasted original-scent Lysol once, by mistake. Freakin’ faulty nozzle.) But the Vanilla Chill is really good: it’s well-textured gum, not too hard, not too soft, doesn’t squeak against your teeth like some gums (…Carefree); it holds its flavor a good while; it has a nice vanilla top note, but not too fake, and the mint is fresh but not overly strong.

If you don’t want to try any new foods, how about a moisturizer that smells like a food? Demeter sent me free lotion when I ordered cologne, and both the orange cremesicle and lime varieties smell just lovely — you notice it, but it’s not overwhelming. But if you’re in the market for a basil-scented lotion in particular, I’d go with the Thymes version instead; it’s a little fuller.

Okay, enough food…unless you live in Brooklyn, in which case, one more food thing and then I swear I’ll move on. Check out a little place called Sample on Smith Street; just pop off the F at Bergen and it’s right there. It’s a wine bar, but not the annoying kind where you have to know the wines before you go and the staff is not so much waiting on you as waiting on their agents to call; it’s super-friendly, you can almost always find a place to sit, the wines aren’t priced threateningly, and I had a parmigiano-reggiano plate there the other night that should really receive a medal of some kind. (So should Couch Baron and Trog, who almost lost a finger up to the knuckle every time they made the mistake of reaching for a piece. Sorry, guys. I really really like cheese.) It came with a fig jam, and I am not a huge fan of the fig’s work, usually, but…man. The waitress said, “It really pops, doesn’t it?” And it really did. It popped. I paired it with a sauvignon blanc, which I suspect is Not Done with that kind of cheese, but that white had enough punch.

And now, a weird segue into socks. (Or maybe not so weird, depending on how you feel about hard cheeses.) I have spent a month searching high and low for a proper knee sock — not a sock that calls itself a knee sock, but only by dint of not being an ankle sock. An actual, touches-my-knee knee sock. I would not call myself freakishly tall, either, but every time I thought I’d found the perfect sock, the picture would tell the truth, namely: calf sock. Come on, world of hosiery. Then I thought of the Lands’ End catalog, and hallelujah, knee socks that come up to my knee, stay there, and aren’t going to fall apart after two wearings. Which reminds me: does it happen to anyone else that, when one pair of socks goes, they all go? Socks and underwear? Because I sprang a hole in my favorite pair of Old Navy stripy socks last week, and the next thing I know it’s the Heaven’s Gate cult and I’m the crime scene unit standing over my sock drawer all, “What happened here?” Toes bursting out, heels giving way, it’s madness, and never mind the knee-height element, it is really hard to find a non-argyle sock lately. Anyway: Lands’ End knee socks. Best $22 I’ve spent in a while.

I needed the knee socks to go with the neat boots I splurged on, actually, and I can’t say enough good things about my Camper boots. My quest to find a boot with a long enough shaft (…I know, hee) had gone on for ages, to the point where I made Wing Chun and AB Chao go on Zappos and look at my favorites file and tell me which ones I should get, but then that just confused me more, and they’re both in different IM windows with their arms folded all, “If they’re ‘too caramel’ then don’t get them, freak!” and I’d be like, “But what if they don’t go with my –” “PICK. A. BOOT. NOW. PLEASE.” So I picked a boot, and it is amazing. It is tall, it is soft, it is pretty, it goes with pants and skirts, and it is like wearing a pillow. Love! It’s a lot of coin for a pair of boots, but I decided to think of it as an investment, and it has paid off. I walked a mile in them the other day and not a whinge or twinge did I hear from my fussy feet.

And finally, for a shot of the pop-cult random: Bettie Serveert’s “Palomine.” I don’t know what to make of the albums Amazon recommends if you like this one; Rilo Kiley is right, I guess, but “Palomine” isn’t as whimsical, I wouldn’t say. I’ve had the album since college and I just put it back in the rotation over the weekend, and it’s gotten even better. Give it a try on iTunes, if it’s there.

You’re welcome. …Hey, cute shirt!

October 24, 2005

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