The message says, “Help protect your home against unpredictable breakdowns!”
I hate it when houses break down and just won’t stop crying, don’t you? You need some serious therapeutic feng shui when that happens, let me tell you.
Day: July 8, 2008
Who are you, and what have you done with my taste buds?
Oh my. Do I actually now like beets? I may have to seriously re-evaluate my dining options.
This past Sunday, I discovered that Tom Colicchio, the head judge on Top Chef (to which I was ridiculously addicted this past season) owns a chain of take-out sandwich shops, including some in New York. Including one just around the corner from where I work near Bryant Park.
My first thought was, how can I have never seen this place? Turns out I have. It’s actually a handful of small kiosks inside the park; one serves soup and sandwiches, a couple others on the other side of park serve desserts. (They maybe blend in a little too well.)
So I decided to try it for lunch today. And, inspired in part by two recent New York Times articles — the 11 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating and Putting Meat Back in Its Place — as well as my desire to lose weight and maybe ease a little of my back pain, I decided to go vegetarian.
This actually didn’t leave me with a lot of options — I’m still fairly secure in my distaste for chickpeas and olives — so I went with the roast beet salad. (Not as uber-healthy or vegan as it might sound; it was topped with goat cheese and candied walnuts, and I also bought a cream soda on the side.) But it’s worth noting that I don’t like beets, never have. And yet it was a really good salad. I genuinely liked the beets. It was akin to the moment, maybe fifteen years ago, when I realized that, oh hey, I actually did like mushrooms. Not exactly an epiphany or anything — the clouds didn’t part — but it does open some more eating possibilities.
I’m a pixie, I’m a paper doll, I’m a cartoon
Back when I first heard about Pixish — “a place where people who want images and people who make images can easily find each other and collaborate on creative projects together” — I set up an account and posted an assignment. I’ve been very lucky to feature some great artists over the past four issues of Kaleidotrope — from the covers by Remi Treuer and Jim Cleaveland, to interior artwork by a long list of talented people — but I’m always on the lookout for work that I think will complement the stories and poems in each issue.
Still, I posted my assignment pretty much as a lark. So much of a lark that I promptly forgot all about it. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone to take it seriously.
And yet I find, upon visiting the website again, that there are now close to 50 submissions. If you’d like, I think you can go in and vote on them — although I’m not sure how much, if at all, that will play into my decision-making. Some of the submissions are very good, although obviously even some of those will not work well with the realities of Kaleidotrope‘s printing (black and white, photocopied). I’m going to need to take a closer look at all of them.
Officially, the assignment closes on August 1, but I think I may try posting another one as soon as that’s done.
This time, I just need to remember it.