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editor
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 Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:02 am Post subject: |
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Not Much Fun
The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker
Compiled and with an Introduction by
Stuart Y. Silverstein
| Quote: | THE BRIDGE FIEND
How do we cut for the deal?
That's so, we did it before.
Partner, we'll beat them, I feel -
Oh, I just hate keeping score!
Really, I don't understand,
Under the line or above?
Partner, just look at my hand!
* I must be lucky at love.
Partner, I haven't a thing -
The hearts were dealt in a lump.
Don't tell that was your king -
Well, then I've wasted a trump.
Now it's my bid, I suppose -
Goodness, who dealt me this mess?
You made it lilies on those?
Isn't it time to progress!
Oh, did you see what you did?
Why, you're an absolute dub!
Didn't you hear what I bid?
Couldn't you lead me a club?
Kindly keep track of what's played -
What a remarkable lead!
Tell me how many we made -
Set us three hundred? Indeed!
(-- p. 69) |
| Quote: | | * Danish proverb: Lucky in love, unlucky at cards. |
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| Posted: Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:15 pm Post subject: |
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The Young Apollo
and Other Stories
Hardcover
By New York Living Landmark Louis Auchincloss
| Quote: | | I should make it clear that I was no philistine. If I cared too much for dancing parties and smart clothes, if I spent too many weekends visiting rich friends in chic resorts like the Hamptons, if I had a bit of a yen for gambling and casinos, I was still up on the latest novels and plays and served three afternoons a week as a docent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was not from a lack of appreciation of the finer things in life that I found Pa and Sumber's ecstasy over some silly little phrase excessive. (From the story entitled, Pa's Darling, at p. 195) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:36 am Post subject: |
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Not Much Fun
The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker
Compiled and with an Introduction by
Stuart Y. Silverstein
| Quote: | PRINCESS MARY AND VISCOUNT LASCELLES
Here behold, and likewise lo,
Princess Mary and her beau.
Bright her cheek with maiden blush;
Shall we say a royal flush?
How we've watched their love's ascents
In the Sunday supplements!
Blessings for the happy pair;
For their photographs - the air!
(From Life's Valentines at p. 113) |
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| Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2007 10:04 am Post subject: |
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A Treasury of Short Stories
Favorites of the past hundred years from Turgenev to Thurber
from Balzac to Hemingway with biographical sketches of
the authors
Hardcover
Edited by Bernardine Kielty
| Quote: | N.Y. Aug. 3
DEAR MISS GILLESPIE: How about our bet now as you bet me I would forget all about you the minute I hit the big town and would never write you a letter. Well girlie it looks like you lose so pay me. Seriously we will call all bets off as I am not the kind that bet on a sure thing and it sure was a sure thing that I would not forget a girlie like you and all that is worrying me is whether it may not be the other way around and you are wondering who this fresh guy is that is writeing you this letter. I bet you are so will try and refreshen your memory.
Well girlie I am the handsome young man that was wondering round the Lasalle st. station Monday and "happened" to sit down beside of a mighty pretty girlie who was waiting to meet her sister from Toledo and the train was late and I am glad of it because if it had not of been that little girlie and I would never of met. So for once I was a lucky guy but still I guess it was time I had some luck as it was certainly tough luck for you and I to both be liveing in Chi all that time and never get together till a half hour before I was leaveing town for good. (Opening paragraphs of Some Like Them Cold by Ring Lardner, originally published as How to Write Short Stories in 1924) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 26, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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East Side Story
Hardcover
By Louis Auchincloss
| Quote: | "For heaven's sake, can't you perk up a bit when you go out with him?" she cautioned Isabel. "Anyone can see that you have him hooked, though God knows why. A girl with your looks doesn't have to do much, but she has to do."
"But I'm not sure I even want to get married."
"I'd like to know what else you think you can do with yourself."
"Maybe I can get a job or something. Lots of girls do."
"Lots of girls are trained for something. What are you trained for? You can't even count your trumps in a bridge game."
"Oh, Mummy, please! Your're hurting my feelings."
"It's for your own good, my girl. I know what I'm doing. Didn't I marry a Carnochan myself? It wasn't a bad solution, even with Benson, and with Pierre it could possibly be brilliant. And if you don't mess things up with my old bitch of a mother-in-law, she may do handsomely by you. I know men like Pierre. They may be hard to live with if they don't get what they want, but they're fine enough husbands when they do. And he will get you, if you'll only play your cards right. You and he can go to the top of the world together. My God, when I think what I could have done with your opportunities! I guess it's true that God sends manna to those who have no teeth."
"But, Mommy, suppose I don't want to go to the top of the world!"
Letitia sighed deeply. "Then you're a fool." (From Pierre at pgs. 202-203) |
More stories of New York excess based, no doubt, on the family treachery lawyer Auchincloss must have done his best to avert in his wills and trusts practice over the years.
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| Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2007 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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From Gamblers' Nosh.
Good Housekeeping
Great American Classics Cookbook
Hardcover
| Quote: | Clams Casino
The year was 1917 and Mrs. Paran Stevens was hosting a luncheon for her society friends at the casino at Narragansett Pier in New York City. Maitre d'Hotel Julius Keller created a dish for the occasion featuring clams on the half shell baked with bacon and seasonings. He didn't know what to call it but decided on Clams Casino in honor of the restaurant. Many books include a recipes Oysters Casino, which is also quite tasty.
Prep: 30 min. * Bake 10 min.
Makes six first-course servings.
2 doz. littleneck clams, scrubbed and shucked. bottom shells preserved. Kosher or rock salt (optional).
3 slices bacon
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 red pepper very finely chopped
1 1/2 green pepper very finely chopped
1/4 tbsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 c. fresh bread crumbs (about two slices bread)
1. Preheat oven to 425 F. Place clams in shells in jelly roll pan lined with 1/2-in. layer of Kosher salt to keep them flat, if desired; refrigerate.
2. In 10-in skillet, cook bacon over med. heat until browned; transfer to paper towels to drain. Discard drippings from skillet. Add oil, red and green peppers and black pepper to skillet. Cook, stirring occasionally, until peppers are tender, about five min. Stir in garlic and cook 30 sec.; remove from heat.
3. Finely chop bacon; stir bacon and bread crumbs into pepper mixture in skillet. Spoon crumb mixture evenly over clams. Bake till crumb topping is light golden, about 10 min.
(From the chapter entitled, Dip, Dunks and Nibbles, p. 24) |
A good basic cookbook for beginners.
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 10:22 am Post subject: |
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Match Point
DVD
Directed by Woody Allen
| Quote: | | Protagonist tennis player Chris Wilton in a voiceover: The man who said I'd rather be lucky than good saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependant on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net and for a split second it can go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win. Or maybe it doesn't, (drum roll....) and you lose. |
A confirmed outsider from New York's Lower East Side weighs in unconvincingly, charmlessly, on a cultured, generous, moneyed British family - why, one wonders?
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 11:08 am Post subject: |
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Reporting
Writings from the New Yorker
Hardcover
By New Yorker Editor David Remnick
| Quote: | My first regular reporting job was on the night-police beat in Washington writing anonymous squibs about the catastrophes of others. A typical start, in other words. On my first night - the shift began at six and ended at two or three in the morning - I drove to D.C. police headquarters on Indiana Avenue to check out the "press room." With visions of cigar smoke, poker games, snapping typewriters, and some William Powell-type reporters making wised-up remarks about "the desk" swirling unaccountably in my mind, I found the right door, opened it, and switched on the light. The bare fluorescent tubes overhead flickered, then buzzed into being. There were a couple of gray metal desks shoved into a corner, and, on one of them, a heavyset man still wearing a hat was fast asleep, wheezing a shrill fugue from under his pea-green raincoat. Finally, stirred by the light, he rose to his feet, squinted at me, and then fumbled around for a while in a shopping bag. He retrieved two cans and shoved them in his pockets.
"Hello," he said, stepping smartly across the linoleum. "I'm the night guy for The Washington Times. You must be the latest Post-ie." He reached into his jacket and pulled out a Schlitz. "Wanna beer?" (Opening paragraphs of the Preface) |
| Quote: | | Editor's Note: A good enough scribe, one supposes - he certainly thinks so - but Remnick's watch has seen an unprecedented decline in the quality of both fiction and poetry, and now, in a pathetic bid to attract illiterate 20-somethings, the magazine is under seige by a rock rmusic section more suited to Killsometime.com. We've suspended our subscription until they stop inviting stupid readers to dream up cartoon captions on the back page. |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Thu Aug 23, 2007 10:27 am Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
International Magazine Subscription
Sept. 11/06
| Quote: | The Joke
One afternoon you skipped school
to go for a swim in the river.
There were a few older boys there
splashing around naked,
their clothes in neat piles on the bank.
That time someone hid yours as a joke.
You squatted in shallow water
pleading, while they took their time
combing their hair, getting dressed,
running off without a glance back.
Little by little it got dark and cold.
The lights went on in the city.
Still, you were going to wait a bit longer
before stepping out of the river
to make a search among the rocks -
or, if no luck, scale the embankment,
dash bare-assed over the railroad tracks,
slip mothlike past the first lampost,
let shadows lying past the first lamppost,
let shadows lying in wait take you home
on small streets lined with trees.
-- Charles Simic
(-- p. 57) |
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:06 am Post subject: |
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The Light of Evening
Hardcover
By Edna O'Brien
| Quote: | | He leaned on me as we crossed the street, because they were still shouting and haranguing him, and we walked lopsided, but once on the other side he would not let go of me. I knew he was mad, he had to be mad, the way he raved: Walt Whitman, the city's poet, Walt Whitman's masts of Manhattan and tall hills of Brooklyn, Walt Whitman, who had fallen, just like the blind man, into the mire, as had Horace who succumbed to the lures of a perfume seller. I was a clean girl in a city of vice, ancient Egypt or ancient Babylon no more wicked or no more corrupt. He had been a player once, in the saloons, at the trotting races, chancing his arm, scoring, and even the reverent fathers had singled him out. Sold religious articles, up in the silk stocking district, going from door to door, his valise crammed with holy statues, books, leaflets, novenas, miniature altars, miraculous medals, could put the sales over with a real punch, sold more in a day than the peanut man or the hot dog man. Flying it. Long-lashed Lenny as he was known. Face to face with the ladies and their nice drawl, in their morning coats, with their little lap dogs nested in their laps, time on their hands, their husbands making the loot. Yes, the swank ladies in their swank houses. One in particular. A doll. Wanted for nothing but her cup was never full. He knew the cup she meant. He filled the cup. Sweet as butter grass. Blonds, brunettes, redheads. One played him false or maybe more than one. Went from being a player to a human cockroach. Wakened one morning in some dive to know the game was up. Nausea, the shivers, the disease that bums, stevedores, poets, and the city elders all fell foul to. The syph. Had to be burned out of him. Oh man, the mercury that cured also took away, a descent into blindness. "I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin and defiled my horn in the dust." (From A Blind Man, p. 44) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2007 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Category 7
Hardcover
By persons who would
prefer never to be reminded
of having published such
utter drivel
Get this:
| Quote: | She sat back in her chair and crossed her legs with more grace than she normally would, and noticed that the movement wasn't lost on him. Then she wondered what the hell she was doing, flirting with him. "So which of the storms I discussed have you looked at?"
"Minnesota, Barbados, Death Valey, and Simone."
She nodded. "That Death Valley storm gives the whim-whams. It literally came out of nowhere. When I first saw the radar, I would have bet money that it was a false reading." She hesitated then, wanting to continue but not wanting to give him any idea that she was inclined toward the whack-job end of the research spectrum. All that discussion with Richard had made her paranoid about it.
But damn it, the facts are what they are and can't be ignored.
She leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice, looking straight into his eyes. "Jake, don't read anything into this, but even if I hadn't been looking so hard at the other ones, that one would have sent my woo-woo detectors into overdrive."
... She leaned back in her chair, recrossed her legs without flirting this time, and raised both eyebrows. "No, I don't," she said flatly. "I work on Wall Street, Jake. The betting that goes on there - we call it speculating or investing, but between you and me, those are just ten-dollar words for gambling - what goes on there would make you doubt your own sanity. Chronic gamblers, every one of them, but they have money, so nobody talks about it." (-- pgs. 213-214) |
Woo-woos forsooth!
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 11:54 am Post subject: |
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A Pickpocket's Tale
The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century
New York
By Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Hardcover
| Quote: | | When larceny on streetcars grew excessive, "the riot act was read to the dips," claimed one pickpocket. Some pickpockets were "shaken down" by police, forced to pay a bribe or risk arrest. Other cops resorted to 'four-flushing" - arrest an old crook or "doormat thief," portray it as a big arrest, and ignore the more important criminals. During the 1860s well-known burglars and pickpockets like William Vosburg and Dan Noble reportedly bribed police officials in central headquarters on a weekly basis. Some police detectives were so familiar with certain pickpockets that they could identify them from a sinmple description of when and how a victim lost his or her possessions. Even when the police hauled pickpockets into court, they hired clever attorneys who fought these arrests with writs of habeas corpus. (footnotes omitted) (From The 'Guns' of Gotham, p. 66) |
| Quote: | Police court judges retained enormous power because their courts required no prosecuting officer and lacked a chief magistrate. In theory cases involving doubt, argument, or proof were remanded to the Court of General Sessions for a jury trial, a right all convicted police court defendants enjoyed. Few, however, were advised of such rights. By the 1890s, 79 per cent of all police court cases went without appeal. Since police court judges enjoyed summary jurisdiction over all disorderly conduct and other minor offenses, magistrates not only acted as both judge and jury, but as prosecuting attorneys and counsel for the prisoners. These powers convinced Mayor Abram Hewitt that police courts were "thegreat clearing house of crime, 'the Poor Man's Court of Appeals.'
Elected to uphold the law, police court judges repeatedly broke it. Some, like Maurice J. Power, openly refused to prosecute certain gambling offenses. "I am not opposed to gambling houses," he argued, "if they are conducted honestly." Numerous magistrates never bothered to learn the rules of criminal or courtroom procedures. Rare was the judge who privately met defendants with counsel to discuss the circumstances of the case, as required by law. Instead most encouraged defendants to waive the examination, which in itself was a violation.
... Those with the right political connections secured more than just bail. Indictments were often "pigeon-holed" - literally put in pigeonhole-shaped filing cases and never removed, and thus never prosecuted by the city. In 1875 District Attorney Benjamin Phelps defended the practice, insisting that disorderly house, gambling, and excise indictments were simply too numerous to bring to trial. Excise violations - "dive cases," in the vernacular of the period - enjoyed a two-year statute of limitations, encouraging bailed defendants to seek court delays and additional appeals. Even when convicted, most simply paid the fine and reopened under a new name. In 1887 former police superintendent George Walling claimed that the district attorney routinely failed to prosecute thousands of cases, which accumulated in the pigeonholes for years. (footnotes omitted) (Fom Tombs Justice, pgs. 136-138) |
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| Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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Good Time Girls
of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush
Hardcover
By Lael Morgan
| Quote: | | On one of the first boats in was Tex Rickard, a professional gambler and fight promoter who had lost everything in a Dawson faro game, including his immensely profitable Monte Carlo Saloon. In Nome he teamed with Pat Murphy, who already had opened the Northern Saloon. Tex went on to make a second fortune, which he later parlayed into a prime investment in New York City called Madison Square Garden. (-- p. 160) |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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The Napoleon of Crime
The Life and Times of Adam Worth,
Master Thief
Hardcover
By Ben Macintyre
| Quote: | After the Civil War, Worth drifted, like so many veterans, to New York City, which by the miid-1860s was already one of the most concentratedly criminal places on earth. The politicians were up for sale, the magistrates and the police were corrupt, the poor often had little choice but to steal, while the rich sometimes had little inclination not to, since they tended to get away with it. Seldom has history conspired to assemble, on one small island, such a vivid variety of pickpockets, con men, whores, swindlers, pimps, burglars, bank robbers, beggars, mobsmen, and thieves of every description. Some of the worst professional criminals occupied positions of the greatest authority, for this was the era of Boss Tweed, probably the most magnificently venal politician New York has ever produced. Corruption and graft permeated the city like veins through marble, and those set in authority over the great, seething metropolis were often quite as dishonest as those they policed, and fleeced. As human detritus washed into lower Manhattan in the wake of the Civil War, the misery - and the criminal opportunities - multiplied. In 1866 a Methodist bishop, Matthew Simpson, estimated that the city, with a total population of 800,000, included 30,000 thieves, 20,000 prostitutes, 3,000 drinking houses, and a further 2,000 establishments dedicated to gambling. Huge wealth existed cheek-to-cheek with staggering poverty, and crime was endemic. ...
Solvent for the first time in his life, Worth was determined to beat the odds at every level, and this soon led him to New York's roulette wheels, gambling dens, and the faro tables - that extraordinarily chancy game that was once the rage of gamblers and has since virtually disappeared. Betting heavily in the burgeoning belief that the more he dared, the more fortune would smile, he began to live the life of a 'sportsman,' moving away from the grim Bowery dives to the brighter, more luxurious, but no less dissipated lights of uptown New York and the famously seedy glamour of the Tenderloin district. (From Chapter Three, The Manhattan Mob, p.gs. 19-26) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2009 11:08 am Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
Questions for Felix Rohatyn
The Builder
The former banker talks about how to remake America's infrastructure, why the nation's economy is worse than New York's in the '70s and the appeal of being an engineer.
By Deborah Solomon
Feb. 8/09
| Quote: | We should point out that you’re the investment banker credited with solving New York’s fiscal woes in 1975 and saving the city from bankruptcy. The New York City crisis was less dangerous than the current situation. Maybe for the first time in history, the U.S. is faced with doubts about its destiny. In less than 50 years, we have gone from the American Century to the American Crisis.
What do you make of President Obama’s $800-billion-plus stimulus package? I totally support Obama, but I would argue in favor of a greater amount of infrastructure investment and probably fewer tax cuts. There should be less concern about rapid liquidation and greater emphasis on long-term investments.
The emphasis now seems to be on shoring up levees and making repairs to crumbling structures instead of building new ones. Repairs are very important, as is new construction, and there should be a mix of both. If we have a major nuclear program in the next 25 years, for instance, then we have to do something about the infrastructure that goes with that, from creating an energy grid to dealing with nuclear-waste disposal.
Are you concerned about the number of students who have forsaken engineering for business school?
They’ll go back to being engineers after they’ve discovered that business school doesn’t make them millions of dollars. They’ll see the stock market doesn’t do them much good, so they might as well do something constructive. (emphasis added)
Which country do you think has the best infrastructure? France has a very good infrastructure. You get on the train in Paris to go to London, and two and half hours later you’re there, and you haven’t even felt a vibration. ... (-- p. 20) |
Bold Endeavors
How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now
Hardcover
By Felix Rohatyn
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