The Jolliest Time Of The Year

Who doesn't love Christmas? For Christmas Eve dinner we had delicious handmade ravioli:


I got it at Raffetto's, a shop owned by the family of one of Biz's friends. They own the building, which is how they can run a limited-hours cash-only handmade pasta shop in the West Village, and boy am I glad they do. Now that I've discovered it, I can have fresh pasta every day of the week!

At our house, Christmas Day is pretty laid back. There's cookie-nibbling...


Present-opening...



Mimosa drinking...


And pet torture.



Also, I found a picture from Christmas '95 on Scott's hard drive. I was a STYLISH seventh-grader.

Just be thankful I didn't post the one from '94, when I was into ruffled blouses.

Merry Jewish!

For some reason, Jewish jokes in Christmas movies/episodes just slay me. When Clark Griswold says "Happy Hanukkah" to the dude at the end of the line behind his boss in Christmas Vacation, when Kenneth the Page wishes Lonny the TGS staffer a sincere "Merry Jewish" in 30 Rock's perfect season 2 Christmas episode, "Ludachristmas"... I can't help it. Maybe I'm a bigot, but a bigot filled with the spirit of giving!

Last week I had a four-day weekend and mother made a lovely meal for the family and plus-ones on Thursday, and then on Friday we braved the snow to see the Chatham Community Players production of A Christmas Carol, which has changed very little since I was in it in seventh grade. Grade-A nostalgia. I can't help it if the sets are hokey. I absolutely loved it.

As you can see, they still haven't gotten over my bravura performance as "Cratchit Child #4" in the 1995 production, and maintain a shrine in my honor.



Dan gave me a copy of The French Laundry Cookbook for Christmas. Ohhhhh sweet sweet boy. For New Year's we were thinking of making some kind of decadent meal, and now I have an entire book of ridiculously difficult, labor-intensive recipes requiring astoundingly pricey ingredients! I AM SO EXCITED!


Anyway. It's Christmas Eve Day. I'm at work. I don't mind. We get out at 1, I have a mimosa at my side, and What About Bob? is on!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Headers

Yes, eagle-eyed readers. I have made the switch to a custom header. Do you like? I think I like. In case you were wondering, it's the New York City set on the Warner Brothers lot, so I think it nicely captures the whole "Partially Californian New Yorker" thing that I've got going on. Good times.

(Photo, of course, by Dennis Kwan).

The Weekend In Famouses

Aside from a nasty tumble into the 6th Avenue L station, I had a pretty fruitful celebrity sighting weekend. First was Anne Hathaway at cheapish Union Square noodle place Republic, with (I assume) her new boyfriend. Rafaello who? This was my second time seeing her in a restaurant. We're so in sync. Then I saw an Olsen twin picking out a Christmas tree (mostly homeless-looking, so I assume Mary-Kate).

Mom, though, met Carson Kressly. Mom wins.

M'Anklette

Last time I sprained my ankle... well, if you were there, you remember it. Oh look... Dennis remembers! The night itself might be hazy, but it was my first and last truly out-of-control party, the first and last time a Denny's refused me service, and NO ONE can forget the aftermath of this shit:


Well, I sprained it again over the weekend, in an awesomely lame way (missed the last step going into the subway). I feel silly complaining about it, though, when Dennis's epic ankle injury is like the worst thing ever. But I'm happy that we are co-gimps. Weak ankles of the world unite!

Fun fact: in Variety, when they report a firing, the executive was "ankled." Hollywood makes no sense.

Lobstaaaaa

In today's Dining section, Melissa Clark has an article about taking advantage of the current, insanely low price of lobster.

At The Lobster Place near West 4th, for instance, live lobsters are $7.95 per pound, culls are $6.95 (I'm not sure what a cull is, exactly, but I do know that I wouldn't bother with them when the regular ones are under ten bucks) and fully cooked, cleaned, and cracked bad boys are $9.95 a pound.

So this year for Dan's birthday dinner, lobster was obvious. As a present to myself, I spent the extra $2 for the dudes at The Lobster Place to cook it (has there ever been a better-spent $2? No). But what to do with it? Last year I prepared this crazy-ass butter-poached mushroomy feast, which was sweet and all, but I didn't want to get predictable. So, similarly extravagant but totally different: paella.


I tucked chorizo, shrimp, and lots of luscious cooked lobster into a bed of saffron-onion scented rice baked at high heat until crunchy on top and crusty on bottom. I used Mark Bittman's Minimalist method, which is quite easy and means you don't have to follow the Slow Food Movement recipes that you'll find elsewhere, which take three days.

Go make paella! Lobster prices won't be low like this for long!

Office Parties

My company's Christmas parties, in years past, have been legendary. Allegedly last year it involved live penguins, and our VP mentioned that she's never once gone into the ladies' room at said party without at least two girls vomiting and one undergoing emergency resuscitation. It was even listed as a perk when I got my benefits package. Health, dental, tuition reimbursement... invitation to epic holiday party. So of course, this year, it was cancelled.

That's okay. We'll just have our own party, in the office.

You know it's going to be good when the division head comes into the staff meeting and says, "Now, I'm not saying DON'T drink so much that your head's in the toilet..."

Fa la la!

NBC: Flailing Wildly

Last year, they cancelled their upfront, saving ~ as much as Viacom did in cancelling their holiday party. This year, they're cancelling TEN PM. This is definitely insane... and possibly brilliant.

If you don't obsessively follow network television gossip like certain people, I'm referring to NBC's decision to put Leno on five nights a week at 10pm. This is a big deal. Here I thought they were just going to do an ER spinoff or or another Bachelor knockoff (Momma's Boys? Seriously?), and instead Jeff Zucker unleashes the oozy charm of… Jeff Immelt… on his disenchanted Golden Boy of Eleven Thirty and presto change-o: we've changed the game.

People are saying this is a terrible move; that Leno isn't a good lead-in for local news at 11 and that it steals Conan's thunder for Tonight at 11:35 and completely undermines Fallon at 12:30, and, more importantly, that he can't compete against the procedural powerhouses of CBS.

I'll concede the first two points, but with caveats: major national networks really don't plan their schedules around providing a base audience for their local affiliate news stations, and Jeff Zucker is banging his head against the 52nd floor elevator door for promising a $40 million penalty clause to Conan if NBC backed out of the Tonight transition. I love Conan, but it would have been worth losing him to keep Jay. Jay is broad. Conan is not. Basic math. And don't even get me started on Fallon, the (in Nancy Franklin's words) comic nonentity who somehow got The Roots as his house band.*

Leno's likely audience has trouble staying up until 11:30, and even if he can't pull huge numbers against CSI, guess what: neither can anything else NBC's been putting on the schedule. So the depressing part of this is that NBC has kind of given up. No: it's straight-up given up. But I think it's the right move. And it will save the network about $13 million a week in production costs.

SAG's going to love this.



*I don't believe this, but I'm afraid it's likely true.

Gleaming Streaming Flaxen Waxen...

Q: Which major movie star appeared in the original Broadway cast of Hair?

A: Diane Keaton! Here she is singing "Black Boys."


I think she's the one in the middle.

Next question.

Q: Which occasional blogger was in a high school production of Hair that featured a 90% female cast and did not feature the song "Black Boys"?

A: ME!

I'm just like Diane Keaton.

Anyway, I think it's so badass that we did Hair at my high school, because it's not exactly high school material, and it gave me the chance to sport a 'fro. I was an idiot to miss it in the Park this summer:




...and am very excited that it's coming back to Broadway this spring! Yay! Obama will be in office and free love will reign again. Or something.

Haleakala Crater

Pictures from a very wet, dormant volcano. Despite the crazy weather and thin air, I LOVED Haleakala. It would be a great backpacking trip.

Maui!

Maui is full of cool little beach towns. It wasn't what I was expecting--not in a bad way, noooo, but I was expecting to land on the Jurassic Park island and instead it has these kind of dry mountains on the coasts and pockets of intense greenery inland. Plus it's this eeny-weeny island; the day Dan and I went snorkeling we realized we had half the day left and checked up the Iao Valley and drove a third of the road to Hana. Then I had a very delicious mahi-mahi sandwich at the P'aia Fish Company or something like that. Oh, there was a lot of delicious food in Hawaii. They're onto something with their sushi rice snacks and their marinated raw fish (I thought it was all about the poke until I had the lomilomi salmon); umbrella drinks, sure, but there's also something to be said for the coffee at ABC. Plus our B&B hostess knows the value of a little baked breakfast with ice cream. Restraint was not in order.

Our first try snorkeling was cool but a little iffy--we borrowed stuff from our B&B, Dan didn't have fins, and we kind of almost drowned a little. The next day we went on a trip to the Molokini Crater, a partially submerged volcanic cone, which trip was wonderful. Christina recommended going through the Pacific Whale Foundation and was so very right; the staff was great and the reef tour included a bunch of sea turtles. They got all up in our grill; it was just great.

We also went to a luau for some feasting and hula. They cooked a pig in a pit and kept the mai tais coming; this was where we realized that 90%+ of visitors to Maui are honeymooners or faux-honeymooners rekindling their vows or whatever. "Are you on your honeymoon?" "Are you on your honeymoon?" "Are you on your honeymoon?"

"No, we're just on vacation"

"..." (blank stares).

It's not an insult. We just looked happy. But I didn't know we were the only boyfriend-girlfriend couple in the history of the world to go on vacation together. Dating couples! Get it together! Trips are the way to go! Just check out the pictures. Yessssss.

Oh My

I'm not a comic book person, or one of those Anna-from-The-OC-I'm-a-girl-who-likes-comics-because-I'm-an-individual people, but when Dan nearly wet himself upon seeing the first Watchmen trailer, I gave it a go. And it's really good; it's (for the most part) realistic/naturalistic and an interesting exploration of '80s Cold War paranoia, and dares to ask the age-old question, "What if Richard Nixon had served five terms?"

And the movie looks incredible:



Hopefully it won't be litigated back into the can.

Dear Me, The Electoral College

Sometimes you express yourself fully. And then sometimes an editorial board does it for you.

End Sidebar: On To Paradise

And then we were in Hawaii. We started the trip in Oahu, which gets a lesser rap in terms of the islands. I thought it was great. Here's Dan, reading the paper in Waikiki because Dan loves to read the paper:


We had a nice view into Honolulu from our lanai:


And we saw two middle-aged peoples almost get into a barfight at Duke's, the best bar in America! Seriously, though: it is. We couldn't figure out the stupidly low prices... especially for Lava Flows.



Umbrella drinks and New Yorkers, together at last.

Waikiki is crazy touristy, yes--it reminded me a bit of Vegas--but Oahu is much more than Honolulu. On our first full day, we decided to have a "local"-type adventure and took a city bus to Kailua Beach, a favorite place for kayaking and spotting sea turtles. It took a while, but the bus trip was worth it--loquacious drunken locals chatting with one another, sober locals chatting with us, and relatively jaw-dropping scenery that left us gaping as the regular riders read US Weekly. After a little confusion and more walking than anticipated, we found it:






The sand was actually creamy. You could have whipped it into soft peaks. The water was so clear, so warm but not gross warm, and the beach itself was surrounded by palm trees, butterflies, and Golden Retriever puppies played with sticks right in front of you as attractive people passed out cupcakes. Kailua Beach Park: who knew? (Not enough people, but that's a good thing. It was empty). Worth the trip, right?

Anyway, Oahu is awesome. But we only had a little time there--not enough to get sample the apparently awesome Pan-Asian food in Honolulu. Next stop: Maui!

On Tofu

In seventh grade, I decided to go vegetarian. This was one of the few times my entire family was in perfect agreement: this was a stupid idea. They kept making chicken until I caved in, and even though I spent a while in college on an actual vegetarian diet, I figured something out by junior year:

Tofu is gross.

Maybe it's because I ODed on it in Australia, making tofu stir-fry three nights out of four, but no. That's not why. It's because it's mushy. It's because it tastes like nothing. You guys, people will lie to you about tofu. They will tell you that you can make it taste like anything, and you can't. You can make the outer two millimeters of the tofu cube taste like whatever you want, but that inner however-much-you-have, that will taste like a white mush.

And that is why tofu is gross.

Sidebar: Eva Green

Upon return from the islands, of course Dan and I rushed immediately to Kips Bay for a 9:15 screening of the new Bond.

It was... pretty good. Parts of it, like when Bond identifies the members of an international natural resource crime syndicate during (of course) an Austrian black-tie performance of Tosca, were great. And bits of it stuck with me. But the girls, man. The girls stank. A butterface and an idiot with this weird nasal upper register. How can they do this, when Casino Royale gave us Eva Green?


Sorry, that's the other absurdly hot chick from CR. It was a double-downgrade. Eva Green:


I have such a girl love for Eva Green. First off, she's French. Immediate hotness, duh. Second: she doesn't seem that hot. Just like, in a picture. She just kind of smolders like she knows what's coming and then puts on a backless dress and then wham: hot. And according to IMDB, she has a fraternal twin sister, Joy, who studied business but is now married to an Italian count, with whom she resides in Normandy where they rear horses! They're like a human version of the Cullens (which reminds me: I read Twilight on the plane last week, the vampire book with the movie coming out that teenage girls are obsessed with, and although it was totally entertaining and... readable... and it brought up all those intense teenage feelings that I kind of miss... you guys, why? All of this? Really?).

So, in short: next movie: Eva Green. Bond can chill with Vesper's twin.