Diasporic Dining XXXIX: Remember Schrafft's?

Remember Schraffts and Longchamps. Remember the Madison Delicatessen, Ratners, Gitlitz's and Tip Toe Inn. (the once elegant deli that was a fixture on the Upper West Side during the 50’s and which was recreated for an episode of Mad Men). And who can forget Nedick’s (whose hot dogs, made from pork and rotating all day on a grill shot their hot juices into your mouth) which was a respite if you were on 86^th Street and didn’t want to have to put up with the smell of beer and rye which filled the air of the counter at the Blarney Stone or Martin's Bar? Horn and Hardart’s, the automat, was like the three card monte of fast food to the extent that hands were always moving magically behind the little doors that opened with an infusion of change. Then there were Chock Full ‘O Nuts which made an unsuccessful comeback at a 23^rd Street location and Orange Julius. Did you know that the location occupied by Smith and Wollensky on Third Avenue, with its Tudor façade was actually a venerable institution called Manny Wolf’s Chop House. And how can you forget that famous mecca for cabbies, the Belmore Cafeteria on Park Avenue South (which played a cameo in Taxi Driver). Then there was Bickford’s. You had to be in a certain kind of mood for Bickford’s whose bland name communicated something about the taste of the cuisine. And what about the Chinese places with the specials that went from 1-10, the first being chicken chow mein, fried rice, egg roll and wanton or egg drop soup, with their Naugahyde booths, murals of Confucius and take out areas which resembled the waiting room of a dentist’s office with their fish tanks and piles of worn magazines. The Lotus Eaters on 86^th, Jade Mountain on 12^th and Second and Hong Fat’s the representative of Chinese American cooking in Chinatown. Oblivion is now the haunt of all of these legendary establishments and one wonders if there isn’t even a place in heaven where the hulks of these old favorites reside.

Pornosophy: In Praise of Objectification

Marilyn Monroe (NewYork Sunday News)

Objectification is a much maligned intention. Everybody resists the idea of being objectified. Certainly feminism rails against the objectification of women, though few feminists express equal concern about the objectification of fetching looking studs. One of the objections is that by singling out a women on the basis of her looks you’re turning her into a piece of meat, something that's not better than a hamburger. Even models complain about being enslaved to their good looks. They want to be loved for their minds as well as their bodies. But isn’t this the point? Isn’t everything an object? Let’s say we ignore the allure of beauty, what then do you do about a beautiful sensibility? How do you handle the person with a horrible external appearance, but a beautiful core? If you love the Hunchback of Notre Dame for his mind, are you not still objectifying his inner self? Get out. Once a person fails to meet up to the highest standards of physical beauty, you go down a list which includes brainpower and sensibility. However what makes these other qualities less examples of objectification say tits and ass or in the case of a male, well developed pectorals and a bulging package downstairs? You’re locked into your mind as well as your body and what the two have in common is that there’s no way out.

Hocking Me a Chinik

"Autumn Rhythm" by Jackson Pollock (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, George A Hearn Fund, l957)

Some people with artistic aspirations get things ass backwards. They believe the racquet makes the player or the bottle makes the wine. Their as if attitude towards existence can lead to the existential crisis in which one wakes up one day as if they were drowning, unable to stay afloat and feeling as if their whole life were a sham, their self-conception like that of Humpty Dumpty, in short feeling as if they inhabited a false self. Norman Mailer famously stabbed his second wife Adele Morales and there are writers who think that maybe if they stabbed their wives they will magically attain fame—forgetting of course that Mailer had earned plaudits for his work in spite of the stabbing, just like the appreciation of the work of V.S. Naipaul came in spite of the brutal and sadistic treatment of his mistress that was documented in Patrick French’s biography ("Misogyny, mistresses sadism: why Noble prize winning author VS Naipaul is at the center of the most vicious literary war of the decade," Daily Mail, 1/30/09. Those who might choose to be recluses should be reminded that Salinger moved up to Cornish, New Hampshire, eschewing the New York literary world after he was famous—and not before he'd published anything. Yes Jackson Pollock crashed his car into a tree, yes Mark Rothko committed suicide, but the self-destruction came in the wake of careers in which they were enormously productive. Just getting drunk all the time does not lead to creativity. Post hoc does not necessarily mean propter hoc. One thing does not necessarily come from the other, even though it may be marginally associated with it and that's not to discountenance the subliminally important role the Orphic impulse whereby destruction leads to creation (Joseph Schumpeter coined the term “creative destruction” to talk about capitalist innovation) may play in creativity. So before you stab your wife, or run off to hide in a cave or drop some acid, you might be best advised to write your great novels or paint your magnum oeuvre. Then leave it for posterity to decide whether or not you're were having an out of body experience.

What is it Like to Be a Fly?

You see an ant run as you take aim with your hand. If it didn’t sense danger, why would it scamper away? And who's to parse the difference in response to similar threats of the human mind which traffics in eventualities? The NYU philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a famous essay entitled “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” As Elizabeth Kolbert points out in a recent piece, Nagel's essay could easily have been titled "What Is It Like to Be an Aardvark?" ("He Tried to Be a Badger," The New York Review of Books, 6/23/16). But what is the contrast between what the ant or fly is going through and what we as humans experience think when we see a suspicious looking character approaching us on one of those Hopper Streets with their solitary street lamps? If you’ve ever chased one of those big water bugs or better yet a mouse you realize how canny creatures can be. Such is their elusiveness, if they weren’t rodents you'd want to recruit them as tight ends for a football squad. So what is the real distinction? Both humans and so called lower forms seem to react to the penumbra of danger in the same way and if we assume that animals lack what we call consciousness or thought—an absence which it’s ultimately impossible to verify—then we may assume that what’s missing in the animal mind (Gregor Samsa not withstanding) is a concept. The ant or fly doesn’t say “uh oh there’s a man trying to get rid of me.”  Even the water bug and higher forms like the mouse or rat don’t do that. Humans have highly developed upper brains, one part of which, the language cortex is responsible for putting ideas into words, while animals depend on the lower brain, limbic faculties. So the big difference is language which mediates and translates emotion into thought and also is one of the factors that enables human consciousness to be uniquely self-reflexive. We look at higher brain functions as a gift (which they most certainly are), but might it not be said that animals, who lack such filters, have a better idea of what's going on?

What is God Consciousness?

"Gaia" by Anselm Feuerbach (1875)

What is God consciousness? From the human point of view, it’s the awareness of God, but it begs the question of the relation of a supreme being to those he, she or it looks down upon from wherever such spirits reside. Does God have a conscience? Is that  the motivation behind the order we see in nature and the fact that at the day of reckoning the last end up being first? Or is God's will a kind of value free, Buddha mind, a force of unconditional love and generosity that's ultimately non-judgmental in spirit. Humans can’t be faulted for anthropomorphizing God, but it’s interesting to try to conceive of forces that have nothing to do with human wishes or will. God is often conceived of as either a bearded creature of an earth mother like the Gaia of Greek mythology. In the former case God is a saddened being a bit like the mythological figure ofAtlas who bore the weight of the world on his shoulders; in the latter, the female personification often takes the form of one of those old fashioned l930’s gum chewing switchboard operators. Requests from supplicants come in and God plugs one in with the other, attempting to answer prayers like ones from those seeking parking spaces near the restaurant they've pulled up to on rainy evenings. Is it possible to imagine a God who's not trafficking in human desire and who's not presiding over the agora and deciding who gets what? Is there a God who without being unkind is totally uninvolved in human affairs. Let’s take a planet like Kepler 62f, in the Goldilocks part of the universe, 1200 light years from earth ("Two Promising Places to Live, 1,200 Light-Years From Earth," NYT, 4/18/13). Such planets, with climates that would allow for water, seem like candidates for familiar life forms, but who ever said the dice throw that resulted in mankind was going to be replicated? In other words, if God tried to keep tabs on all his creations, he would have his or her hands full. And it’s not hard to imagine God quitting while she or he were ahead. Copernicus proposed the heretical notion that the earth was not at the center of the universe. From then on mankind has had to deal with the probability that its not likely God’s chosen people.

Sperm Count: Naked in Toledo

A lot of people are just bored and can find nothing more thrilling to do than pull down their pants There's a thrill to watching porn when you’re in a listless mood, but it’s even more exciting to make it and anyone can do it. Those who are exhibitionistically inclined need no longer confine their activities to undressing in front of their dorm or bedroom windows. All you need is the capacity to record yourself and you're off to one of those sites where you'll have your moment of fame. Imagine that you're just sitting listlessly in the one room you rent in Toledo, with the peeling paint on the wall, the kind of apartment that David Lynch might have used in one of his movies.There's nothing but the local Irish bar with the red faced guys sitting cross legged on stools with their veiny bulbous noses, the kinds of barflies who  have nothing better to do than to look indignant as you walk in to drink by yourself. But now just unzip your fly or let that skirt drop to the floor, click your heels three times chanting “there is no place worse than this prison”and you're on your way to a new life in which you can freely show your body to like minded individuals. A lot of people feel daunted when they think of the giants of adult cinema like Ron Jeremy, John Holmes, Sasha Grey or La Cicciolina, but you have to start somewhere and there’s no better place than in front of your own Airbook. Who knows how many people will eventually see your dick or pussy? We live in a new D.I.Y. universe where everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. You no longer have to be Steven Spielberg to run a studio. Twitter, Facebook have created promotional opportunities for everyone. Put one foot in front of the other and take it a day at a time and before you know it, you'll have more "friends" than you know what to do with and you'll never be bored.