Fave Five brought to you by Luvvie's Zagat's

The most annoying restaurant to say out loud is Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Okay, not THE most annoying … I'm sure there are a few others and I'll gladly open the floor to suggestions, so please -- feel free.

Meanwhile, I get the whole story of why it has that name, the whole "I want to show I own this place, so I’m putting my name in front of the really well established name that made me money before it burned down, so that you know the quality is still the same but with a peppy new flair!" thing. When I say "I get the whole thing", I mean get it like I'd get "Murray's Tiffany's" or "Betty Sue's Gucci".

However, in the spirit of Ruth's Chris, I give you Luvvie's Zagat's.

Zagat's, of course, tops the list in the "most annoying restaurant GUIDE to say out loud" category because, like Demi Moore who was "Demi-rhymes-with-Hemi" Moore until the critical mass finally tipped her over into "DeMI-rhymes-with-Marie" Moore that's how it is with the pronunciation of Zagat's. I still, however, pronounce it ZAH-gats and not Za-GAHTS because … and if you're Italian you'll know where I’m going with this … to me GAHTS (phonetically) sounds like Neapolitan slang for something totally different and not quite food-related. Ahem.

For most of my life I've been single in New York, and while I've been dragged to my share of clunkers for drinks or dinner I've also gone to a lot of places that quickly became my favorites. That's the great thing about living in a city this size ... the bar is set really high.

Whenever I went to a place I knew I'd want to return to, I'd put their vitals in a list along with my own rating. It got to a point where I could just whip out my Luvvie's Zagat's guide whenever someone said, "Pan-Asian, Midtown". If you had a craving and a neighborhood you had to be in, I'd have a great place for you to go.

So I now present this week's Fave Five brought to you by Luvvie's Zagat's. I'm going to kick off my Luvvie's Zagat's Fave Five with an R.I.P. in honor of the places I loved so much -- which I could never take off the list but which you'll never find no matter how much you try. Here's to you, Ghost of Dinners Past:

Boxers
190 W 4th Street
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Barrow Street
212-206-7526
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: American/Bar
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Had the most difficult conversation of my life here * Food could be better but I can't forget the times here
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Everyone
Luvvie's been there: A Thousand Times

Café Rafaella
134 7th Avenue South
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Charles + W 10th Street
212-929-7247
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: Café
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Great conversations, always * Great coffee * Great cake * Nice dinners * Cozy in winter, charming in summer, hot tea when it's chilly, white wine when it's balmy * I could live here, surrounded by my best friends, all of whom have come here with me * Or SHOULD come here with me
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Won*t
Luvvie's been there: A Million Billion Times

Chez Michallet
90 Bedford Street
New York, NY 10014
Cross Street(s): Barrow Street
212-242-8309
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Cuisine: French
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Just adorable * So sweet and quiet * Made me feel like I'd walked into a corridor that took me straight to Paris
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: No one in particular
Luvvie's been there: A Handful of Times

McHale's
750 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10036
Cross Street(s) 46th Street
212-997-8885
Neighborhood: West 40s
Cuisine: Bar
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Down and dirty dive bar w. hamburgers that could choke a horse * I LOVE this place, would travel from anywhere to go here * Not one night here was ever wasted
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: work friends
Luvvie's been there: A Thousand Times

Mr. Souvlaki
147 Montague Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Cross Street(s) Hicks Street
718-858-8997
Neighborhood: Brooklyn
Cuisine: Greek
Luvvie's Zagat's Review: Food so authentic it tastes like an accent * The guy always asks if I want utensils, even though I've said "No WE have them" for over 12 years now * He just likes to hear me pretend I've got a husband despite the parade of different men I've brought to his counter
Luvvie's Partner in Crime: Everyone
Luvvie's been there: A Million Billion Times

In closing:
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran

The Diver

I have a smart mouth and it can often get me into trouble. Like all social crutches, this make-'em-laugh tic started when I noticed I got Daddy's attention a lot more often if I was repeating, word-for-word, Edith Ann's sandwich recipe than if I was blathering on about my own boring ass day in my own little kid voice. Hey, Daddy, look what I made with Lego bricks and a good imagination! Yeah, kid, big deal.

So I put together a routine and took it on the toddler circuit (my house) and dinnertime (or Dinner Theatre as I liked to call it) became my time to shine. No one who saw my Knife + Fork Production of Porgy and Bess soon forgot it. And when I was in a Fiddler on the Roof mood, watch out.

I got really good at accents too. And not those mish-mosh accents spouted by those actors who can't do any one particular accent well so instead they mix them all up and pretend they're from a country that doesn't actually exist. No, I'm talkin' really good ones like German and Irish and Puerto Rican and Deep South and various British ones too. (I can take Eliza Doolittle from her 'Enry 'Iggins days straight through to her Rain in Spain days and beyond. Take THAT Gwyneth "Sliding-Doors" Paltrow!). I often said I just made my Brooklynese accent disappear one day in college by imitating my Middle-American classmates and never going back to my original voice again.

I was at my smart-mouth bitchiest during the late nineties when I was knee deep in my own version of Will & Grace – only with a Will who wasn't letting me in on his Will-ness … so I'll say it was a Won*t & Grace.
Won*t and I spent seven years together coining phrases, trashing friends, pointing out people's social gaffs, making up code words, and repeating private jokes so often that they were reduced down to single words. PURPLE was one. EGGIES was another. Meaningless to you – pure hilarity to us. It did manage to turn a lot of people off in those days.

So my advice if you're going to be bitchy, evil, and sarcastic: PLEASE know your audience. Because a person with a make-em-laugh tic will dive for a joke the way Gabrielle Reece dives for the volleyball: pushing others out of the way in a desperate attempt to MAKE THE JOKE dammit! MAKE THE JOKE!!! Only some times you miss the joke and wind up falling on your face and getting sand in your eyes. Regardless of risk I admit: I'm a diver. Having Won*t around almost all the time in those days pretty much guaranteed I'd make the shot. He always laughed. So I got careless.

Two cycles back, America's Next Top Model had a moment like that involving CariDee who thoughtlessly tossed off a joke involving a stick, Nigel Barker's butt and ... well, you do the math. Of course in the editing room they highlighted the utterance with sound effects and subtitles JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED HER JOKE which, by the way, was WRONG and HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE (or so the sound of a needle being torn from a record indicated to me).

CariDee got reprimanded so harshly by the panel (which includes a has-been model [who, without ANTM would have fallen off everyone's radar some time in 1972], a drag queen [who's not so much queeny or draggy as he is bored], and an over bleached eye-roller [who's snide little Sotto Voce remarks during a photo shoot usually lead to that girl's photo landing in the bottom two] who have all been know to evilly mug for the cameras every chance they get when they're supposedly "judging" which girl is "out of the running from becoming America's Next Top Model" ...) that she was reduced to a shaking pile of blubbering snot as she read an I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry apology note that made me cringe inside. So ridiculous! And yet it must have worked for her, since she went on to win.

How come when you say something by accident and feel genuinely sorry about it, the person you inadvertently hurt gets a get-out-of-jail-free card and can bash you into kingdom come – amid the cheers of onlookers? Why is it okay for someone to have unlimited access to getting you back for something you didn't mean in the first place? Obviously, I've been there once or twice.

One time involved a friend of a friend visiting town, his "fear" of condiments, my inability to stop waving a vinegar cruet in front of him, and the subsequent beat down from five other friends who all called me cruel, vicious, thoughtless, juvenile, and mean. (But look – Won*t is doubled over in hysterics! Don't you out-of-towners see that it's Really Very Funny? We'll be laughing about this one for years! The keyword will be Mustard!)

That one didn't bother me; though I'm still amazed at how, to this day, those out of town friends will repeat "Remember how mean you were to D that one time?" And yet they all have complete amnesia when it comes to the part of the trip where D got back at me ten fold every chance he got despite my Personalized Tour of New York created Especially for Six People out on a Jaunt over the Long Weekend. He was awful to me! But selective memory persists and I'm always painted as the villain who couldn't put down the ketchup for TWO SECONDS and try to understand the trauma I was causing him. Fear of condiments?? A real phobia? Someone call Dateline and arrange a sting ... I'll pose as the 14 year old holding a bottle of Frank's Red Hot sauce.

The second time isn't so easy to mock. In fact it stayed with me for days. Or, I guess ... years. I call it the Blind Kid Story.

The Blind Kid Story happened around 5 years ago but I can still put myself right there in that room and feel that powerful hatred coming at me from a total stranger all because I had to make the joke. My friend G and I were going to the movies and we were tagging along with 2 guys she knew. One was a kid I knew through her (who I'll refer to as Kid) , another guy was a complete stranger (who I'll refer to as ... Stranger).

G and I had been waiting outside Stranger's cubicle and, to kill time, I read some of the things he had pinned to his wall. A Dear Abby column caught my eye.

Some guy was writing to Abby, explaining how he lost his sight due to an illness, and how he wanted something or other and how maybe she could make that happen. And the first line she wrote back was "Dear X, your story touches me so deeply that I want to do whatever I can to help you". I didn't read any further because instead I had to say, out loud, the first thing that popped into my mind which was "If she really wanted to help him out she could have started by writing to him in braille so he could read her answer". I actually wasn't even trying to be funny ... really just making an observation that was a bit wry, IMHO.

My friend G laughed. The Kid laughed. I laughed. If Won*t had been there he'd have high-fived me with an "Oh my GOD!" gasp that outranked the laugh every time. It was probably him I was thinking about when I said it, because it was something he would have appreciated. But he wasn't there. And neither was my guaranteed shot.

Stranger looked at me with absolute pure hatred, snatched the paper out of my hand and said, "You know, that's my friend who wrote that. He's the one who went blind". So, like CariDee, I immediately blasted through a really heart felt I'm Sorry I'm Sorry I'm Sorry apology, probably more than necessary. Stranger looked me right in the eye and said "I don't need to forgive you. You're just ignorant. And nothing will ever change how you are. So I don't need to forgive you. I just need to feel sorry for the fact that you have to go through life being you."

Pause.

Here's the part where, If I'd have been smart, I'd have said good night and walked away. Or here's the part where I tell you how my friend G defended me a little bit with a "Hey, she didn't know" or even a "Well, it is a little bit true". Or here's the part where someone does something to break the tension. But for some reason, we stood there in the awkwardness and somehow still all decided to go to the movies.

We all got on the subway together (with Stranger ignoring the seat that opened up next to me opting to stand the whole way) we all searched for something to eat together (G and I headed for a Cosi, Stranger took off down the block followed by a shrugging Kid who did the gender allegiance thing) and we all watched the most sobering movie I'd ever seen – City of God. Stranger wouldn't even sit in the same row with me. Through the whole movie I could hear him thinking: "See, you ignorant bitch, see … see how awful life is for some people? What kinda joke are you gonna make about THEM, huh? Something about how that five year old kid doesn't have a HEAD anymore cuz it just got blow off by a gang banger?"

I never stopped feeling bad about what happened. And I never stopped feeling worse for how Stranger had completely misunderstood that I hadn't meant it to be mean. I just couldn't stop that dive … and I couldn't shake the Won*t legacy of thinking everything I always said was so damn funny.

Sure, a lot of time has gone by, and sure … Stranger and I never crossed paths again. And sure I had a long talk with a good friend about it on the phone that night, and dissected it till it all was better. But you know, I never stopped wishing that for that one moment back at that cubicle I didn't have such a smart mouth. And to this day, sometimes if I'm with someone who doesn't quite know me well enough, even if someone tosses a great setup my way, I'll hold my tongue and just let someone else go for the joke.

Let's All Go to the Lobby …

I go to the movies. A lot. Not like I see one every week, of course – that would be overkill. More like every OTHER week.

There are a lot of movies like The Namesake and Once (or even Crazy Love and Ratatouille) that keep me coming back. Yet every now and then I'm surprised at how I was suckered into paying ten bucks for a clunker like Epic Movie or the Omen remake (yes, I gave in to the hype and saw it on 06/06/06) both of which left me waiting for a scene bright enough to light the theatre so I could steal a look at my watch. I spent much of those movies shaking up the popcorn bag to ensure good Milk Duds distribution throughout and wiggling around in my seat trying not to imagine that there were roaches crawling across my feet. The mind wanders.

You think I'd know better, considering I'd probably seen the trailer for those movies at least five or six times. But hey, they edit those things to be funny/scary/baffling so, really, you can't blame me for being a sucker.

There was a Simpsons episode where Milhouse, all excited about his first "R" rated move, chants "Barton FINK! Barton FINK!" And the chuckle, of course, is that of all the R movies to sneak into, that ain't it, kid, that ain't it … Which was the same thing I said to myself after the first time I orchestrated my own unauthorized double feature. That ain't it, kid.

It was with my Boo, Quibbit, back in May when the theatres were so clogged with Spider-Man 3 audiences that not one monotoned "welcome to AMC Theatres, enjoy the show" usher could be bothered to prevent our little come-out-then-wander-around-by-the-refreshments-stand-then-go-back-in-again maneuver. Ha ha! Gotcha Monotoned Usher! Take THAT establishment! I'll show you ten dollars a ticket!

Except that our second feature was The Invisible.

The mostly-empty theater didn't quite tip us off --- after all, Spider-Man 3 was basically on continuous loop in 4 of the other theaters so we didn't exactly expect to be fighting the crowd for a movie that didn't have Spider in the title.

Some reviewer said that The Invisible was just like The 6th Sense which tells me that even the reviewer couldn't be bothered watching this movie --- because it was NOT "just like The 6
^th Sense". In fact it was "just like the OPPOSITE of The 6^th (I see dead people) Sense" in that it was "The (I see live people. Who are looking for me. Because I'm the one who's dead. Only no. I'm not dead. And they don't see me. So no one's seeing any dead people. Hence the title …) Invisible". Trust me – that was no spoiler. Thus no Spoiler Alert.

To be accurate The Invisible was actually just like Just Like Heaven, only without the Cure song in the credits and without the scenery being

a) chewed up by Marc Ruffalo and
b) obscured by Reese Witherspoon's chin.

I digress. Point being, my one tangle with a self-assembled double feature was so pointless that I don't attempt it any more.

Anyway … since I'm at the movies so much I get to see a lot of trailers and a lot of Coke commercials, and a lot of those Guess the Celebrity Name things (GERMANY = MEG RYAN … that's a good one) and since I love the whole movie experience so much I'm happy to get there early and laugh every time late comers stumble in with their gallons of soda and their feed bags of popcorn, scanning the seats and then taking the only empty ones available, which are either in the first row or on the extreme left. (FYI: extreme right always fills up first for some reason).

And I'll gladly sit through Hey There Delilah for the brazillionth time because it gives me one more chance to turn to Quibbit and say "Did you see the real Delilah in People Magazine? I don't get it!" And it gives him one more chance to say "I like this song … and I liked the seven hundred other versions I've hear of it that came before". (You can see the influence I've had on him.)

But lately my most looked-forward-to-moment of those 20 minutes of commercials and previews and people watching and Milk Duds distribution is the Fruit of the Loom commercial that features a duet with Vince Gill and the Apple guy. Like underwear, he's with me till I die.

This is the kind of stuff I wish I was creating in my real life … not just in my pretend life where my novels are toppling Harry Potter from the #1 spot on the Times bestseller list and my second career as a commercial jingle writer is so lucrative that it pays for a loft in Red Hook, a second home in Venice, and a yacht that takes me between the two.

You can laugh, but I teared up more at this song than I did during the scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Sirius got killed at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange. Ooops. Spoiler Alert.

I've Been FRAME'd!

Of all the things I never thought I'd be interesting in (vacations on the beach, camping in some nature preserve, going vegan, studying mathematical theory) well, Irish folky type bands top that list. I grew up in Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish, where every March the Catholic grammar school went Green (back when that meant something else entirely) and all the halls were plastered with posters of 4 men dressed as leprechauns and smiling gleefully over their respective instruments. This was my introduction to Irish bands.

Now, don't get me wrong, my Sinéad O'Connor album was never off the turn table for long during my college years (You heard me, I said TURN TABLE. It's where we used to put a VINYL RECORD, which spun around and played minuets and ragtime and cave music). But my interest never meandered farther than that, not even to Bono or the Cranberries. So to see me staring at the Amazon page watching "Falling Slowly" over and over again on Sunday morning was a little surreal.

After seeing Once on Saturday night (by accident) I found myself thoroughly captivated and obsessed with Glen Hansard, this movie, the music and the story. Funny to call a movie "Once" when it's so destined to become a movie that people watch over and over again. I’ll spare you my movie review or plot outline, but I will tell you that it's firmly in my top 10 of all time.

So, in short: The Frames ... my New Favorite Thing. I seriously was thinking to myself tonight (as I gazed all moon-y faced at the YouTube video of Falling Slowly and When Your Mind’s Made Up) "Wow ... who'da thunk it? I got me a school-girl-crush on a band again." You some how hit this age and think you're out of the music scene ... not having felt this excitement since you raced out to buy Madonna’s True Blue album. And you suddenly feel 17 again … Nice.