Strange Fruit
The other day Solomon and I were walking home from seeing Fiddler On The Roof with Harvey Fierstein, and as we walked by the former home of the WWF Theme restaurant on 43rd Street I recalled that Tama Janowitz, author of Slaves Of New York, once wrote a series of hilaaaaarious restaurant reviews for the New York Press several years ago. Despite that fact that I have trouble remembering the names of people I've met five minutes ago, I was able to remember several different ones - about the WWF restuarant, about donuts, and about an unusual tropical fruit that smelled horribly and which she served to friends as if it was a type of smelly cheese.
In her review of the WWF restaurant, for example, as I recalled it, she didn't seem to actually know the official name of the restaurant (or in this case, wrestaurant), and just kept calling it "the wrestling restaurant". She also did a review of donuts in which she talked about donuts and gave the impression she was going to compare four different kinds of donuts, but then forgets to buy two of the four varieties, and decides she doesn't want to issue an opinion on something so personal as one's donut preference, so after two pages you come up with no review, really, but the stories involved were terribly funny - they must have been, since they stuck in my mind all these years.
I think "missing the point" is such a funny concept, especially when combined with aggressive digression. It reminds me of a documentary I saw once about Andy Warhol where he described why he made movies ("it's easier - you just turn on the camera") and how they thought it was fun to make a movie and do lots of zoom-ins where you just missed the subject entirely. While he was saying this on the voice-over, the documentary cut to clips where they were doing just that - having a big scene of people, several nude and all of them high, and then zooming in on someone's knee, for example. Perhaps not coincidentally, Tama was friends with Andy pre-mortem.
Yesterday I gave myself a treat, and printed out all of her reviews, which are available online, and read them in chronological order last night. E thought I was insane as I sat there laughing at a bunch of restaurant reviews, but they are really very good. There were several that I think I missed the first time around, and the ones I had read were just as funny the second and third time around (I read some bits aloud to him). She has a great style of writing with lots of subjunctive clauses, which I like, and she also does a few other things I like, such as 1) using the phrase "as is my wont" and 2) making lists of only two items.
They are really all very funny reviews - there are fifteen of them, I see, but really I think the very best one is the one about the durian fruit, but the donuts, the wrestling restaurant, and the review of Gotham Bar & Grill are all terribly funny as well. With the one about the Gotham Bar & Grill, for example, begins as follows:
In the morning I woke next to a huge signed cookbook called Alfred Portale’s 12 Seasons, a card saying "Gotham Bar & Grill, Adrian Gjonbalaj, Manager" and a diagram of a vagina with arrows pointing to various parts with notations such as "stainless steel labia majora," "raised copper clit" and "perforated steel labia minora." Another note said, in a scribbled handwriting, that there were vagina tables in a restaurant called NV, which had been designed by Paul Carroll.
Apparently I had been out to dinner the night before.
So if you're looking for something clever to read today, I would recommend those, which I have thoughtfully linked for you HERE so you don't have to look them up or sort them or anything.
I guess someone at the paper didn't find missing the point to be quite as amusing as I do, since her review of a Senegalese restaurant starts out by saying "I cannot tell you if Chez Gngagn Koty's is a good Senegalese restaurant or a bad one..." and it is, perhaps not coincidentally, her last review in that paper.
Also, Ed Shepp today has a nice fantasy involving Uma Thurman that is very funny, too, and is a good deal shorter than those 15 reviews for those of you with ADD.
My point, now that I'm getting around to it, was that I wanted to talk about the durian fruit today. Any of you ever had a durian, or perhaps even just walked by one? I'm really curious about them now. If you know anything about them at all, post a comment.
That is all.
In her review of the WWF restaurant, for example, as I recalled it, she didn't seem to actually know the official name of the restaurant (or in this case, wrestaurant), and just kept calling it "the wrestling restaurant". She also did a review of donuts in which she talked about donuts and gave the impression she was going to compare four different kinds of donuts, but then forgets to buy two of the four varieties, and decides she doesn't want to issue an opinion on something so personal as one's donut preference, so after two pages you come up with no review, really, but the stories involved were terribly funny - they must have been, since they stuck in my mind all these years.
I think "missing the point" is such a funny concept, especially when combined with aggressive digression. It reminds me of a documentary I saw once about Andy Warhol where he described why he made movies ("it's easier - you just turn on the camera") and how they thought it was fun to make a movie and do lots of zoom-ins where you just missed the subject entirely. While he was saying this on the voice-over, the documentary cut to clips where they were doing just that - having a big scene of people, several nude and all of them high, and then zooming in on someone's knee, for example. Perhaps not coincidentally, Tama was friends with Andy pre-mortem.
Yesterday I gave myself a treat, and printed out all of her reviews, which are available online, and read them in chronological order last night. E thought I was insane as I sat there laughing at a bunch of restaurant reviews, but they are really very good. There were several that I think I missed the first time around, and the ones I had read were just as funny the second and third time around (I read some bits aloud to him). She has a great style of writing with lots of subjunctive clauses, which I like, and she also does a few other things I like, such as 1) using the phrase "as is my wont" and 2) making lists of only two items.
They are really all very funny reviews - there are fifteen of them, I see, but really I think the very best one is the one about the durian fruit, but the donuts, the wrestling restaurant, and the review of Gotham Bar & Grill are all terribly funny as well. With the one about the Gotham Bar & Grill, for example, begins as follows:
In the morning I woke next to a huge signed cookbook called Alfred Portale’s 12 Seasons, a card saying "Gotham Bar & Grill, Adrian Gjonbalaj, Manager" and a diagram of a vagina with arrows pointing to various parts with notations such as "stainless steel labia majora," "raised copper clit" and "perforated steel labia minora." Another note said, in a scribbled handwriting, that there were vagina tables in a restaurant called NV, which had been designed by Paul Carroll.
Apparently I had been out to dinner the night before.
So if you're looking for something clever to read today, I would recommend those, which I have thoughtfully linked for you HERE so you don't have to look them up or sort them or anything.
I guess someone at the paper didn't find missing the point to be quite as amusing as I do, since her review of a Senegalese restaurant starts out by saying "I cannot tell you if Chez Gngagn Koty's is a good Senegalese restaurant or a bad one..." and it is, perhaps not coincidentally, her last review in that paper.
Also, Ed Shepp today has a nice fantasy involving Uma Thurman that is very funny, too, and is a good deal shorter than those 15 reviews for those of you with ADD.
My point, now that I'm getting around to it, was that I wanted to talk about the durian fruit today. Any of you ever had a durian, or perhaps even just walked by one? I'm really curious about them now. If you know anything about them at all, post a comment.
That is all.
posted by DavisMcDavis @ 9:23 AM
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