OK I tried: Access Denied.

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Lovely link, thank you.

If Kiku was feeling really clever he could probably doctor the link somehow and send it to me so I can read it like he did with the penguin bashing game. My boss got all excited just now - thought I had access to something interesting and came running over to my desk

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Man gets on tube train yesterday afternoon, bottle of Bordeaux in one hand (no wrapper, no bag), Robert Parker's monster tome on Bordeaux wines in the other. Nose buried in the book, checking out wines from a retailers list he is also clutching, he jams the wine bottle on the floor against the side of the train with his foot to keep his hands free to leaf through the pages. Man next to him, a devout muslim judging by his beard, eyes shooting daggers at him.

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On another food site, someone is asking for testicles on a stick for her husband's birthday.

well, it appears that he used to ingest these on a daily basis, but I guess marriage has turned it into a special occasion thing:

http://www.chowhound.com/boards/manhat/messages/154691.html

Ah, The Simple Life.....

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/041117/1/3okv0.html

at my dinner party of six tonight. Two French guys, trying to out-french each other --arguing over everything from the virtue of a bottle of wine (whether it's a Cru Bourgeois) to how current one's knowledge of street French is (how fast is a car when it's a veal)-- to to the amusement of the rest of us around the table.

heh...testosterone poisoning knows no cultural boundary, I suppose.

nope no architect. a radiologist and a physicist, no architect tonight.

Nerdy men skateboarding around Manhattan. I've seen a lot of it lately.

Is Jean-Luc Godard related to Albert Steptoe?


Steptoe

Godard

Dargis's interview with Godard was surreal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/movies/21darg.html

A woman in my office is wearing a black lace halter. Aside from the fact that she must be freezing, she looks as if she's on her way to a cocktail party. She is also a total pain in the ass, as is her boss, so I am sorely tempted to complain to the office manager about her attire. But I am too fine a person for that.

No, thank God. Black lace over a nude lining. Just the ticket for bopping around a trading floor.

U2, outside my office on seventh avenue, playing songs on a flatbed truck.

Either that, or an Annoyance. I can see opposing schools of thought.

Yes, or a tryptych. Or any trilogy. Or anything in three parts.

I am worried that Rachael may cease to be taken seriously as a result of this enterprise:

There is a companion volume from the same publisher, by Tony Bourdain. It's called Cooking Sucks!.

So this noon I am sitting in Café Lalo waiting for the pecan pie I ordered to be sent up and I begin to smell a powerful stink. I realize I am sitting near the door to the toilet and I wonder if that is the source of the smell. Then I glance over to the Fairway shopping bag I set on the marble table. The shopping bag filled with mounds of Vacheron Mont d"or and other ripe specimens. The smell mysteriously changes character and becomes enticing. Oh, the mind does surreal things.

Oh how funny.

Last year on a day ski trip, a piece of cheese of particularly stinky nature fell off my backpack and hung around the trunk stewing all day while we were out skiing.

The whole drive back to the city German Boy and I -yes that was back in German Boy days- tried to pin the smell on each other's ski socks...only to to have a big laugh later when we found the real culprit weren't our smelly feet.....

Cheese is truly wonderful that way, isn't it? My aunt once bought a wedge of brie in a Paris market and brought it back for me in London. It was a hot day on the Eurostar/tube, and apparently the ripe scent of brie was so strong fellow passengers pointedly moved away from them.

So, reverse psychology. Next time somebody farts horrendously on the tube, instead of tutting and wrinkling your nose and getting upset, imagine one of your fellow travellers is carrying covetable cheese stuff and drift into a happy reverie of desire.

Was looking forward to the first T-Day in yonks when I wouldn't be babysitting a bird in the oven. Day dawned bright, warm, sunny. Kids gone to their Mom's for the week, Hub at work 'til 3, then dinner at friends' house (Toby and Hilary – this only matters for purposes of telling the story). Nice quiet solitary lazy day.

'Round 11am a raging thunderstorm blew through: pounding rain, hellacious wind and thunder to rattle the foundation (and the outside temperature dropped 10° in 10 minutes). Went on for half an hour or so. As the rain petered out and the sun broke through, the phone rang. It was Hilary (on cellphone, as apparent from shitty mountain reception): "Do you have power?" Yes. "Turn your oven on to 325°, we're on our way over with the turkey."

And so I find myself cooking another bird. Toby and Hilary went on to her brother's to borrow his generator, and dinner will go off as otherwise planned at their house.

Today I wore a little black wrap dress to work. No-one treated me any differently.

Where can I get me one of them little blackened wraps? Do they taste good?

Mine was quite nice with a dab of mustard, tana.