Wilfrid

Anyone else had problems with Resy recently? I have been battling it for a couple of weeks now. Usually works after a few tries. Today, web version: click any restaurant and there is no availability for a party of any size ever (it may be that it's trying and failing to load availability). Desktop and iPhone the same. Today, app: click any restaurant, Something Went Wrong Go Back/Retry. I guess I'll wait a couple of hours and try again. Or I could use the Telephone.

I think they need to make a bit more money before that happens. Last trip to New York, they had to borrow a guitar from the support band halfway through the set.

Four months later, I've just read Picasso and His Friends by Fernande Olivier. The book, covering the years 1903-1914, was heavily featured in the exhibit along with some of Olivier's art. She lived with Picasso for most of those years, which, as Francoise Gilot would confirm, is a good way to get your own art overlooked. It's a period in which Picasso transformed from the starving artist in the Bateau Lavoir to the rather successful artist in a nice apartment; also when he moved in a ridiculous circle of talent -- Apollinaire, Braque, Modigliani, Matisse. Olivier was right there and the simply written memoir is fascinating. She confidently assesses some of the artists in the group (Juan Gris not particularly gifted) and her view of Picasso is, well, unillusioned. This took me four months to get to because my library's edition was out for repair.

The Adam West/Burt Ward? I grew up with it and had no idea it wasn't serious. Shout out to Eartha Kitt, Cesar Romero, Frank Gorshin, Burgess Meredith.

Because I missed them.

New thing from the last few show, Ana now casually hoists Cisi on one shoulder.

Oh right, "crisp" is adjective enough. I take your point.

Should see the line outside Lexington Candy Shop. 😵‍💫

I'll be honest, I didn't watch Columbo or Cannon or Kojak, etc, so I don't know.

I love scrapple but you really do have to get the pan so hot that water explodes from it (and crank up the extractor fans) because it must be crispy.

Columbo, meh. Episode 2 is just terrifying. No spoiler, but conjures a personal terror for me, then just makes it worse. Jumping out of the armchair saying fuck no sort of thing.

Thanks for that and will think about it.

I never met her but I remember her posts well.

For sure. I wore those for years.

Look what just surfaced. Australia (look at that glass), circa 1987.

Ooh, king crab wrap comp...

Just watched the season 2 opener for "Poker Face." Spectacularly good. For all its quirkiness, this is a show that actually bases each episode around a mystery, lays clues, and has the "detective" explain the solution. Like an old Thin Man movie. Plotwise, it has patience. Layered over the plot, all kinds of wildness. Cynthia Erivo makes the most of her role(s(s)) and Natasha Lyonne is endlessly watchable. I think there are several more episodes already available.

I was curious about Wegman's Next Door (entrance just inside the Astor Place supermarket), but as I am sitting here I guess my curiosity is partially satisfied. Surprisingly attractive space. You can see out but outsiders can't see in. A large crew of uniformed staff. A 9 seat bar, a separate sushi bar, tables and banquettes. I will get no further than the Pommery this evening, but I will put it on the list for dinner.

I saw a ramp martini on IG. Full liquor license now?

Whoa, there's a lamb dish in place of the pork. Booking now! May have to eat the duck app and the green asparagus, but there is cheese too. Light lunch, I guess.

Might have to step away from alphabetical order because there's a series of huge volumes coming up; there are shorter ones later in the list so I could mix it up. 16. Durrell, The Alexandria Quartet (the whole thing or maybe only Justine?) 17. Eliot, Middlemarch See what I mean?

Almost finished The Horse's Mouth, Joyce Cary's largely comic novel about a wreckless, broken-down painter Gulley Jimson. I say largely comic because although Jimson's life is constant and largely self-made chaos, Cary relentlessly shows him looking at the world around him as a painter; and it's very well done. The dialogue is well done too, which is just as well as most of the book is composed of multi-page episodes in which Jimson shares his world view with friends, former lovers, possible investors, equally broken-down priests and so on. Line by line, these scenes are beautifully written and very funny. But it does seem to me they could be fewer and shorter since they advance neither the plot nor our understanding of Jimson. "...(W)ho is Gauguin? You don't mean that French painter who did dead dolls with green eyes in a tin landscape. I couldn't paint in his style unless I became a Plymouth Brother with the itch, and practised on public-house signs for fifteen years." I do have a nice, boxed Folio Society edition with illustrations by John Bratby.

I want to try that duck pithivier.

Well, El Born is drizzling olive oil, La Pineda isn't.

For comparison, some of the bites from my last visit to La Pineda.