The LaMarque Challenge!

Last night I made a dish that starred pork and kimchi. While fine, I wondered: what would Roger do with those ingredients?

THE CHALLENGE:
Make a dish starring pork and kimchi!

WHO DOES IT:
Roger...and maybe YOU! cmon, why not!

GROUND RULES:
You have two weeks to come up with a pork kimchi recipe.
Make anything you please--even pork-kimchi waffles!
Add any ingredients you please--even crushed Oreos!

Just document with photo and recipe and any taster comments.
I will post the recipe I made at the end of two weeks.

BRING IT!

Last 10 books. Not the best. Not the worst. Just the most recent.

1. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K Dick: I think this is his best novel. Fast moving and paranoid. Tight, technical yet effortless sci-fi writing. And carting around a PK Dick novel bumps your cred with the Asperger's crowd in the programming department.

2. Steps by Jerzy Kosinski: I believe Kosinski actually wrote this one himself. A short, depraved collection of 1-3 page vignettes detailing the absolute worst in human nature. Bonus – includes beastial sex!

3. Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo: Crap. Eager, sentimental pap. Sucky characters. I liked some of his earlier books a lot – Straight Man especially. He toed the small town preciousness line with Empire Falls, and this time he just wallows around in it for like 500 pages.

4. Wind Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami: I think everyone I know read this 10 years ago. I finally got around to it over Christmas. If you’re reading this, you probably already read it too and know it’s an excellent book, so that’s that.

5. Rabbit Redux by John Updike – I like Updike a lot. ‘Memories of the Ford Administration’ is probably my favorite, but this, the second in the Rabbit series, is right up there. Updike wangles you into liking a genuinely unlikable character. Difficult to reconcile the repeated use of the word ‘cunt’ with a guy who looks like this:









6. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell: So awesome. A vivid, comic, first person account of a year-in-the-life of a 13 year old boy in a shitty town in the English midlands in the early 80’s. For anyone who remembers junior high school fondly, this will help you recall the experience more accurately.

7. Falconer by John Cheever: Had read a lot of Cheever’s short stories, which are amazing. Listened to ‘Reunion’ on the New Yorker fiction podcast a while back (it's just 12 minutes, check it out), figured I’d try one of his novels. Falconer is set in a prison. Ass rape. And lots of it.

8. The Road by Cormac McCarthy: This is one of the best books I have read. Couldn’t put it down.

9. World War Z by Max Brooks: Mel Brooks’ kid. An historic retelling of the worldwide Zombie apocalypse. Despite the sophisticated subject matter, you may be shocked to find this isn’t particularly well written. Still, I have a weakness for this crap. Zombie fans, watch Italian gore-master Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2 (note: there was no Zombi 1). It has a scene where a guy dressed in a zombie costume fights and actual shark.



10. Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart: Liked it, didn’t love it. Very funny, just never really got into the book. I think the writing got a bit too cute for me. Includes some of the most carefully described portrayals of binge eating and morbid obesity you’re likely to find anywhere.

it's a man's, man's, man's, man's, man's...you get the idea

RIGHT-CLICK & SAVE PLEASE: "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown


Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings played a titanic soul review style show on Friday at the Beacon. Towards the end of a set that had most folks shouting, shaking and shimmying, Jones and co. busted out a fine version of the James Brown standard "It's A Man's Man's Man's World".

It was a fairly bold move, not just because of the gender winkyness: "It's A Man's(x5)" was a signature tune for JB and often climaxed his legendary love show. For all his kinetic funk tracks, the man was also a supreme balladeer who, before devolving in to a EddieMurphariffic grunting self-parody, could send a crowd in to a frenzy with a simmering slow tune. Yes, he tossed in all sorts of squeals and sandpaper shrieks, but they often served to heighten the song's aching tension and release, most often on It's A Man's(x6), which, live, not only showed off JB's voice and whatever supeforce band he had in tow, but let the man wax philosophical about the roles of dudes and dudettes in the free market economy.

ANYHOW, here is a primo "live" example of JB and band on It's A Man's (x7). Culled from the "Sex Machine" album (a largely faux live album that was in fact recorded in a studio and featured audience overdubs, hence my use of the otherwise twee quotey fingers), this track should have any right thinking person rendering their garments and shrieking with glee!

So download, rock out and enjoy THE MAN JB!!!!!!!

...And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

A spot of yummy reggae courtesy of the reissue gods at Light in The Attic Records. Right click to save and enjoy!! Why NOT!!!

If This is Love (I'd Rather Be Lonely) by Eddie Spencer
Think urgent Motown, not stone n zone. I love this so much I pay you to listen!

Love Makes The World Go Round by Johnny Osborne
Sweet vocals, tasty drums and little else. A total yummy mindfuck, no bong needed!

POST YOUR TUNES! Drop a line to Jeff Tancil, (President and CEO of TancilTown Enterprises) to learn how!

Seltzer's Top Ten of 2007

No order here either.

The Landlord.
Cuz Dick-in-a-Box was '06!



My Website.
Thank god my doppelganger, the Rebecca Seltzer of Baltimore, MD (I'm on to you, sweetie), didn't snatch up this URL before me. I finally got my act together and put some work up on the webernet.

Trip to Berlin and Helsinki.
Traveling alone is something I had never before done. Anonymity is refreshing condition. As is paying 160 euros/month for a room in a HUGE apt. in East Berlin. I rented a bike and found all sorts of cool places. By cool I mean abandoned!



Sunsets in My Room.
Pretty....


Absurdistan.
Written by this guy, Mister Hilarity himself, Gary Shteyngart. I implore you to drudge up a character in the history of 'lit-ra-ture' like Misha Vainberg. Mischa is a fat, fleshy Russian man who gorges himself on rap music, psychoanalysis, and top-shelf liquor. He's in love with Rouenna, a black girl from the Bronx, whom he met while living in NY. This is a girl who, while touring Post-Soviet Russia with Mischa, asks: "where the niggaz at?" The book is propelled by Mischa's desire to get the hell out of the Eastern Block and back to Rouenna and the U.S.A. I'm telling you: this is a very clever, and hugely entertaining story, with the most grotesque adult-circumcision scene ever to hit the shelves of Barnes and Noble.

Longford.
This is an HBO made-for-tv-film that is rentable. It is based on the true story of Myra Hindley, who with her lover, Ian Bradey, tortured and killed five children in Britain during the 60's. Lord Longford, a labor minister and noted social reformer, decides to campaign for Myra's release after meeting her. The movie is riveting, Samantha Morton especially. The relationship between Longford and Hindley is a notorious one in Britain's history. Perhaps in the same way that Dick and Perry and their slaying of a Kansas family is known in the US from In Cold Blood.



Rediscovering the Hammock.
It's a swing, it's a bed, it's swed!


Music I Obsessed About and Played Into the Ground.

• 100 Days, 100 Nights, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
• The In Crowd: The Story of Northern Soul, Various
  
• The Scene of the Crime, Bettye LaVette
• Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Sergei Rachmaninov (never knew I liked him)
• In Case We Die, Architecture in Helsinki
• Food & Liquor, Lupe Fiasco
  
• Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon
• Set Yourself On Fire, Stars
• Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
• Tone Soul Evolution, The Apples in Stereo
• The Fallen Angels Live 1973, Gram Parsons
  

Nimrod Nation, Season 1.
I downloaded the first season of this show and it made me strangely homesick for the Midwest but in a way that keeps me firmly planted in NY; a sickening sort of nostalgia. It's a documentary series about Watersmeet, Michigan, a tiny town obsessed with high school basketball. The team, and it's chance to make State, is the only current running through town. Think Friday Night Lights with snow instead of sweat, Native Americans instead of Blacks, and documentary footage instead of fictionalizing. Why should you watch? For the unintentional humor, the accents, and the father-coaching-son-on-basketball-team drama.

50 Books/50 Covers.
A juried exhibit at the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) featuring a range of awesome book covers and interiors.

KT's Top 10

1. Getting engaged
What else can I say?

2. Fez
We traveled to Morocco in February and I fell in love with this town. The tiny-winding streets, the markets, the smells, the people, the incredible tiled-treasures behind each door, the lovely people we met made it on one on my favorites place


3. Seeing the sun rise and riding with sheep in Amelego
This part of the trip to Morocco was one I'll never forget. After spending a couple of days in a tiny town in the High Atlas Mountains, we walked out of our hosts' home into the pitch-dark early morning, threw our luggage on top of a van along with chickens, sheep on their way to maket. We climbed into the front seat of a van packed with people, but no one spoke. The Arabic radio played and the sheep shuffled their feet above us as we made our way up the mountain road. With our faces pressed against the windshield, we saw the bright red sun come up -- it was stunning -- trust me.




4. 30 Rock
I do like this show!

5. The Erie Canal
Another trip. Riding our along the quiet tow-path of the Erie Canal this past summer was certainly a highlight.

6. Space
Michael and Matthew, two of my godchildren in Rochester, made this little film with their dad's camera while seated in their car-seats in the back of the car. I should say, Michael's 6 and Matthew is 5!



7. The return of CBS FM

8. Finishing the Vietnam exhibit

9. The Farm
I have enjoyed regularly meeting the Ace for what I believe are the best burgers in NYC at the Farm on Adderly.

10. Discovering the Wall Street Baths!
After years of (happily) going to the 10th Street Baths, the "Schviting Group" did some research and found the Wall Street Baths. It is clean, a little bit cheaper and has pool!

Okay, okay, I'll share. This is in no particular order. In fact, it may not even be ten things. Nor are they necessarily on the top. It's just notable stuff, most of which simply amuses me and perhaps you too!

1) Getting my parents' old digital camera: So they got a brand, spanking new camera to go with their two laptops, scanner, photoprinter, regular color printer, and cable modem -- none of which they know how to use -- and I got their old camera. It's sweet! It's not so great at taking nighttime shots, nor does it boast a hell of a lot of pixels, but the number of strangers I've stalked and snapped and who have, in most cases, looked like they were about to chase me down the street and offer me a can of whoopass is impressive! I shall keep it.

2) Moving to Ditmas Park, USA: Now I have restaurants in my neighborhood! And there's a natural food market war going on just outside my window! And the roaches who used to tuck me in at night are marching over the heads of some other punkass fool on Albemarle Road! Rock.

3) Finishing but not yet defending my dissertation proposal: One day you will all hear the dulcet tones of the Ace on NPR talking about fucking (often literally) slummers on the Lower East Side of Manhattan between 1880 and 1915. Just you wait!

4) Romantic (?) adventures: Something about Ditmas Park or girls with brown hair and glasses or reading the newspaper or poring over a Saul Bellow novel or a bit of the old Marxist theory seems to set the hearts and loins of young -- or not-so-young -- men afire. That's why I've collected several phone numbers in the past few months and even went on a date with a dude who asked me to be his "fuck friend!" (I declined.) But it's all made for some stories to tell someone else's grandchildren.

5) Many, though by no means all, 18-22 year olds: Most of you have heard me bitching about the college students I teach -- how entitled and egocentric they are, how shittily they write, how blase they are about education, how little empathy they seem to have, how badly behaved they can be. They deserve it completely. Kids these days, I tell you. But there have been several who've made me feel semi-secure about the future of the world and to them I offer praise. I won't tell you or them who they are, though. Hopefully, they'll make themselves known to you by being the cool people they are.

6) Engagements: Within two days of one another I got the jaw-dropping news that two of my closest lady-friends would be getting married within two months of each other. So many twos! And they're both marrying dashing, pulchritudinous, and witty young suitors. It's like a freaking Jane Austen novel. I couldn't be more excited -- plus, I get to be some sort of dude of honor in each of 'em, so more dress purchases for me!

7) Four different hairstyles in one year: From layered and professional, to cutesy and curly, to medium-lengthed and ratty, to its current short pixieish length, I have succeeded in making myself recognizable for no more than three months at a time. Quite an accomplishment. Call me Zelig.

8) My trip to Chicago in August: I met a lot of cool people, ate a lot of meat, and stared at the lake for a good long time -- the perfect itinerary for any trip to the Paris of the Midwest.




9) Some movies were pretty good: I especially liked the Joe Strummer documentary (why did I discover that The Clash was cool only after the age of 30?), Lars and the Real Girl (despite his stupid name, I think I would have a torrid affair with Ryan Gosling), Atonement (long chick flicks where British people die with their lover's names on their lips really get me in the gut), and No Country for Old Men (it made me long for revenge in the '80s). Plus, two druggie classics -- The Man with the Golden Arm and The Lost Weekend -- reminded me not to be a skid-row addict or drink too much rye.

10) Foodstuffs: Taking a class about cheese at Artisanal; eating a lot of Farm burgers at The Farm on Adderley; trying all of the arepas at Caracas Arepas; drinking an absinthe cocktail that destroyed me for two days; the Sicilian tuna sandwich at 'wichcraft; the scones at Paradis; the Greenmarkets; French radishes; being invited over for balls at Kate's and Jeff's; chowing on the sausage that Jesse ground, mixed, and grilled in his own kitchen; the lasagna at Christmas; the BBQ at Roger's and Keiko's; the re-opening of Second Avenue Deli; the new Eating and Drinking Guide; bacon.

Thanks for inviting me to post this year, dudes.