American Madness

David Barsalou has taken the time to go back and track down the original comics of over 60 of Roy Lichtenstein’s works, he then compiled them next to the Lichtenstein prints and posted them online.

You get to see a comprehensive overview of Lichtenstein’s source materials and see how closely he interpreted/copied the originals. Some controversy has arisen over these early works as he never credited the original artists whose work he was copying. According to Wikipedia:

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We have another two-fer today: Stupid Criminals.

First up, we have a man in Suffolk County, NY who tried to rob a convenience store with a gun. Unfortunately it was either a toy gun or he was totally unwilling to use it (which technically wouldn’t be unfortunate, though if you are going to rob a store at gun point you might want to be prepared to follow through). The guy approached the counter waving his gun and demanded the money in the register. Hafize Sahin, who is, by the way, about 4′5″ and 90 pounds, said:

“I thought the gun is not real. I wasn’t going to open the drawer. I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to give him money.’ I couldn’t give him the money because I thought it was the first time he was doing it.” She added, “I was yelling at him and telling him ‘Get out of here!’ I didn’t want to hit him, I just wanted him to get out.”

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That seemed like an obvious way to go with titling the post since we’re talking about a revolution: Revolution Tea that is… Okay, I know, that was bad, I’ll try and cut down on the cheese factor. Moving right along.

This isn’t my first time writing about tea. I am, what I would consider, a pretty big tea fan. Sitting at my desk at work I go through about 4 cups of tea a day. You might think it is my body craving caffeine that I could get from one or two cups of coffee, but for one I don’t drink coffee; never have, I just think it is bitter. And another point, a lot of the tea I drink is either low in caffeine or herbal, without caffeine. In fact, for the longest time I avoided black teas. Like coffee I thought they were just too bitter and didn’t really have enough flavor to back up all the bitterness.

During the past week and a half I have been trying out some new teas I discovered. Revolution Tea is a small tea company (well, in comparison to say Lipton or Celestial Seasonings at least) located in Arizona. They are producing full-leaf tea in high quality infuser bags instead of your typical ground-up tea in a paper bags. Their packaging is all simple and clean, with a modern feel and design. They have your typical boxes with the tea stored inside a plastic box inside to keep out moisture, travel tins with 6 tea bags, tea tins for larger bags (for brewing pots of tea) and single serving packages; small cardboard boxes with their unique infuser tea bag inside.
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I get such glee about reading about idiocy, usually while thinking “You must be f#cking kidding me!!”

And today we have a two-fer:

First up we’ve got a school district in Atlantic City, NJ that has suspended a seven year-old due to “the school’s zero-tolerance policy for guns.”

Now, guns in school are generally considered a bad thing, and I won’t argue with that. Even toy guns can send the wrong message, so I get the idea behind a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to guns.

And I mean, a seven-year-old, right? That’s just scary. Except, the seven year-old didn’t have a gun, or a toy gun, or pretend to have a gun, or even an have an imaginary gun. He drew a picture of a gun.

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We, here at American Madness, are happy to help you waste away your day at work by surfing the web and are proud to be a distraction. To help keep your mind off that looming deadline here are a few things for you to check out:

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Have you ever been playing a video game and thought “Gee, I bet I could be a British Spy?” Well then, most likely you were playing a James Bond game. Apparently, though the surveillance arm of British intelligence thinks there are a bunch of gamers out there who would make good spies.

USA Today reports that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will be placing in-game ads in to certain games to attract candidates to fill their positions. The ads will be placed online in games like Need for Speed, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Splinter Cell (Splinter Cell being the only spying game of the bunch) on billboards within the game atmosphere.

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Dell’Anima (literally, “from the soul”) is a gastronomic must-do. It is certainly among the top 10 meals I’ve had in the past few years.

As ardent readers will remember, back when we reviewed Babbo, we broke the news that sommelier Joe Campanale and friends would be launching a new Italian restaurant. We now enhance that scoop with another: a first look at Dell’Anima, certainly now one of Manhattan’s best Italian restaurants. Also, one of the most filling. Also, one of the few places where each seamless, hand-blown piece of glassware is costlier than your flatscreen tv.

Don’t ask me what we drank. It was excellent. My dining companions — master Wall Streeter Anthony Ritossa and his elegant wife Sandra, and James Beard award-winning chef, hotelier and executive recruiter Deborah — agreed that the food and drink at Dell’Anima were exceptional. I can hardly doubt you won’t concur. Any criticisms I could state would be petty: too much food if one gets all five courses, no foot massages at the tables, the servers were too nice to work at Le Bernadin….

It is worth going with several people, so that everything can be sampled.

Appetizers:
Definitely get the outrageous bruschetta platter. My favorite item: a mashed potato-like dish resembling what the French term Brandade de Morue but made with monkfish instead of cod. Also, try the onions that are tortured (or put in stress positions, as the Bush administration might say) to reveal all their flavors.

Pastas
The squid-ink fettuccine is the best version of this dish I have ever had, and I’ve been searching. I had previously considered the versions at Babbo and Novita the best, but for the first time I could actually taste the ocean in the dish.

The tagliatelle was very very good, but extremely heavy. One dish is enough for two people, and there’s no good reason to also order a main course if you get it. Unless, of course, you are, like myself, a glutton.

The risotto was a revelation. Typically, the heaviest dish on a menu, it was light and boasted a variety of flavors. It did not sink to the pit of the stomach and absorb one’s will to live (an unpleasant sensation and not to be confused with the apocalyptic desire to evaporate at a moment of extreme bliss described at the entre to this post).

Mains
We tried each of the four main dishes on offer. They included chicken, which I ordered because I wanted to get everything, but which I usually avoid on the theory that the chicken dish is there for the unadventurous and is usually the least accomplished item on the menu. But this was an an altogether worthy item and held its own against the tender lamb shoulder with polenta.

Full disclosure: the food and drink were gratis, but I would have crapped on the restaurant had the food been lousy. You’ll just have to take my word on this. We did, of course, leave an excellent tip. The service was pretty much perfect. Our waitress was one of those beautiful people who sings gorgeous ballads on Myspace and is generally much cooler than you are. When faced with the average Manhattan waitress, who is absurdly likely to be an Ivy League-educated polymath with the balls to pursue a risky career in music, theater or art, I am reminded of Orwell’s ruminations on class gleaned from his stint working in a Parisian Hotel and restaurant (from Down and Out in Paris and London):

The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

This is more true of our city, in which middle class salaries have been reduced to pauper’s pay.

Most of us are terribly risk averse. It was humbling for me to be in this restaurant and to meet its founders and feel the intensity of their nervousness. Veteran reviewers can be objective about new restaurants, but, as a novice, it is difficult for me not to root for Dell’Anima’s founders and employees, whose personal economics are on the line and who are striving for something more than a sales quota or a story deadline.

Whatever success the chef has contemplated, when I took that bite of fettuccine and sat back to ponder blissful oblivion, my next sensical thought was that he had achieved it.

I couldn’t get the pumpernickel bagels you wanted. I got an Everything? That OK?

You made the bed. I hate it when you do that.

Yeah, it’s not really your fault. I had this whole image in my head. I would come back and you would still be lying in bed, drowsy, languorous. Like some Esquire photo shoot. Soft light. Your hair all over the pillow.

Would there be music? Very funny. I don’t know. Not when I thought of it. It would have to be something extremely ethereal. Something like And So I Know from Tiny Music.

And now you’ve made up the bed, and it’s just like I felt in grade school when a friend would come over and not take his sneakers off, and I’m thinking: is he leaving? Is he uncomfortable here? Can’t he commit to spending time with me? Of course, I’d never use the word commit. We didn’t get the word commit until later.

And now you’re up. And I haven’t even showered.

God…I’m glad I didn’t get you the pumpernickel.

Yeah, I’ll take a shower now. And then we’ll go out.

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Archie was really gay. That’s why he couldn’t choose between Betty and Veronica.

Also, Sherlock Holmes, but we all knew that.

Clearly, most superheroes, and especially Captain America, were gay. Couldn’t you tell?

Oh, the literature professors must be in a tizzy. Screw reading. It’s authorial intent that actually matters!

Thank you J.K. Rowling. You’ve now added ammunition to all the liberal arts professors who love to teach the lives of the authors rather than how to read their work.

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