Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Bat Snack




Featuring Batman and Robin


Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Snacklog


Originally emailed January 17, 2008

Subject: A Snack for Others
fotografia courtesy of googlegooglegoogle

Woody Snack


Woody's journalistic account of filming Vicky Christina Barcelona. I have not seen the movie yet, but he is hilarious.
fotografia courtesy of Victor Bello and NYTimes.com

Monday, August 25, 2008

Art Snack?

I realized, in tagging my last post ("Yack Snack"), that it was the first time I have ever tagged a post as

Art.

Which brings to mind the question:

Was nothing on this blog before this an example of art?
Why has art never come into play? Even after multiple posts on books and movies and dance shows and a museum exhibit ?
Should I backlog and tag everything as art?
And of course (haw haw), What is art?

Discuss.

Yack Snack



An installation by Andrea Canalito.

Thank you, Alyssa Yackley, for these snack-minded snaps!

Magical Snack




According to The Medieval Beastiary, the manticore is a composite beast. Using judgement and word skills, I would posit that a "composite beast" is a beast comprised of two or more other beasts. In this case, the mushed-together-beasts (and bits stolen) in question are man (face), lion (body), and scorpion (tail). A first known mention of the manticore in literary works was made by Pliny the Elder, whose existence is a snack unto itself indeed.
The literal translation for manticore is "man-eater," which is clearly why its name is shared with the yacht of that crazy killer chick in GoldenEye.

fotografias courtesy of googlegooglegoogle

Friday, August 22, 2008

Snacklog


Originally emailed November 8, 2007

Subject: Midnight Snacks

"We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts- not to hurt others."
-George Eliot, Middlemarch
fotografia courtesy of me

Cunning Snack


+

+

I guess I have Merce on my mind


"Double or Nothing," by Joan Acocella
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/11/03/031103crda_dancing

An article from 2003 on the BAM dance show he did; live accompaniment provided by Radiohead and Sigur Ros

fotografias courtesy of googlegooglegoogle

Dia: Snack

This was my favorite exhibit at Dia:Beacon when I went earlier this summer. It involves Merce Cunningham and John Cage and love post death, and film, and silence (of course) and a great, vast, dark expanse.

An article about it in the New York Times appeared today. Here is the link!

"Oh So Quiet" by Holland Cotter (which is a snack of a name, if I do say so myself)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/arts/design/22dia.html?ei=5070

fotografia courtesy of NYTimes.com

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Summer Jamz Snack


Free Spa Snack


Date: Wednesday, August 20th

Time: 12:00pm - 7:00pm

Location: Spa Chinois (44 West 55th Street, 5th Floor)

Cost: Free
Spa Chinois invites you to drop by today and get free spa services anytime between 12pm and 7pm. Choose choose from a free Foot Scrub, Eyebrow, lip or chin wax, Chinois Couture Face Mask or Hair Styling. While you're there all gift certificates are 30% off as well as any treatments you book during the party. Plus, free gift bags for the first 200 guests.
I really hope someone I know can take advantage of this as I am stucky stuck at worky work during the given horas.

Snacklog


Originally emailed November 29th, 2007

Subject : one of these snacks is not like the other

there are three snackies in this giant grab bag. i'm not sure how they're related, but somehow i feel a connection. munch on them as you will!

Snack One: Ambiguity
"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won...man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence...So it is with any activity; faillure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself; painting is not given completely either in Giotta or Titan or Cezanne; it is sought through the centuries and is never finished; a painting in which all pictorial problems are resolved is really inconceivable; painting itself is this movement toward its own reality; it is not the vain displacement of a millstone turning in the void; it concretes itself on each canvas as an absolute existence. Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it; which does not prevent there being truths and errors, masterpieces and lemons, depending upon whether the discovery or the painting has or has not known how to win the adherence of human consciousness; this amounts to saying that failure, always ineluctable, is in certain cases spared and others not.It is interesting to pursure this comparison; not that we are likening action to a work of art or a scientific theory, but because in any case human transcendance most cope with the same problem: it has to found itself, though it is prohibited from ever fulfilling itself. Now, we know that neither science nor art ever leaves it up to the future to justify its existence. In no age does art consider itself as something which is paving the way for Art...it has, however, always wanted to be a total expression of the world, and it is in its totality that in each age it again raises the question of its own validity. There we have an example of how a man must, in any event, assume his finiteness: not by treating his existence as transitory or relative but by reflecting the infinite within it, that is, by treating it as absolute. There is an art only because at every moment art has willed itself absolutely; likewise there is a liberation of man only if, in aiming at itself, freedom is achieved absolutely in the very fact of aiming at itself. This requires that each action be considered as a finished form whose different moments, instead of fleeing toward the future in order to find there their justification, reflect and confirm one another so well that there is no longer a sharp justification between present and future, between means and ends."
-Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"

Snack Two: Ambivalence
"There has been a thunder-storm; the ground, as far as they eye can reach, is covered with white hail; the clouds are gone, and overhead a deep blue sky is showing; far off a great rainbow rests on the white earth. We, standing in a window to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind bloiwing in on us, and a feeling of longing comes over us-- unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what. We are so small, our head only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at the white earth, and the rainbow, and the blue sky; and oh, we want it, we want-- we do not know what. We cry as though our heart is broken. When one lifts our little body from the window we cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play.So looks the first year."
-Olive Schreiner, "The Story of an African Farm"

Snack Three: Audacity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikOWQ9YIb-A&
- Destiny's Child, "Eight Days of Christmas"

Monday, August 18, 2008

Wiki Snack- Tapas


This one's for Scoville:

I just Wiki'd "Tapas." Here are some tasty morsels.

The Origin of The Species

"According to legend, the tapa tradition began when Castile's King Alfonso the Wise recovered from an illness by drinking wine and nibbling small dishes between meals. After regaining his health, the king ordered taverns to serve their guests food along with wine and the tapas became a kind of loophole in the law to allow drinkers to drink."

The Eytmology of Tapas, or Tapa, which is Spanish for "lid"

"A commonly cited explanation is that an item, be it bread or a flat card, etc., would often be placed on top of a drink to protect it from fruit flies; at some point it became a habit to top this 'cover' with a snack.

It is also commonly said that since one would be standing while eating a tapa in traditional Spanish bars, they would need to place their plates on top of their drinks in order to eat, making it a top.

Some believe that the name originated sometime around the 16th century when tavern owners from Castilla-La Mancha found out that the strong taste and smell of mature cheese could help disguise that of bad wine, thus 'covering' it, and started offering free cheese when serving cheap wine.

Another popular explanation says that the king Alfonso XII stopped by a famous venta (inn) in Cádiz (Andalusian city) where he ordered a cup of sherry. The waiter covered the glass with a slice of cured ham before offering it to the king, to protect the wine from the beach sand, as Cádiz is a windy place. The king, after drinking his wine and eating the tapa, ordered another sherry 'with the same cover'. "

According to Scoville

"In Spain, that shit is FREE!"
Generic Food Network Tapas Recipes

For those of us who can't get to Spain, and would like to make our own

Golden Snack


fotografia courtesy of http://nymag.com

Snacklog



Good Monday, fellow snackers!

While thinking upon my new blog, I realized that the forum through which these snacks are now being transmitted is quite different from the mode former. The very first snacks I shared with others were simply snackful emails sent to friends.

How important, then, to share those snacky beginnings with the burgeoning snack populace! And how important for us old snackers to remember these humble beginnings.

Therefore, I will begin posting a few Snack Backlogs...or, Snacklogs.

Here is one of the first, from October 9, 2007.

"Mr. Skimpole having 'nothing to live upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with rosy cheeks.' His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several openings in life; but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of the oldest infirmities in the world: one was, that he had no idea of time; the other, that he had no idea of money. In consequence of whch he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of making fancy
sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. That wasn't much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music, mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to the world, 'Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue coats, lawn sleeves, put pens behind your ears, wear aprons, go after glory, holiness, commerce, trade, and object you prefer; only-- let Harold Skimpole live!"

-Bleak House, by Charles Dickens.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Wiki Snack



As I sit at my kitchen table eating a Saturday lunch of green beans, baby tomatoes, tuna, and cheese, I did some googling of "snacks" in order to further my study.

"A snack food (commonly called a snack) is seen in Western culture as a type of food not meant to be eaten as a main meal of the day – breakfast, lunch, or dinner – but one rather that is intended to assuage a person's hunger between these meals, providing a brief supply of energy for the body. The term may also refer to a food item consumed between meals purely for the enjoyment of its taste."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snack_food ... it's part of wikipedia's "Meals" series

"Whether you're getting together with family, going to a holiday party, or celebrating at the office, you'll probably be asked to bring a snack or dish."
-http://southernfood.about.com/cs/appetizers/a/party_snacks.htm ... which, may I add, includes recipes for many kinds of cheese straws, slow cooked cajun pecans, and donna's nachos...

"Here are creative and healthy ways to satisfy your hunger. Your stomach is growling, but lunch is hours away. You could indulge yourself with a snack, but you think it's best to avoid treats altogether and wait for lunch. Though you may feel guilty about snacking, snacks aren't necessarily bad. In fact, mini meals several times a day can help manage hunger and reduce bingeing. The key to incorporating snacks is to plan them with variety, moderation and balance in mind. Select foods that satisfy your hunger, supply your body with energy and provide important nutrients."
-http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/healthy-diet/HQ01396 ... I basically just cut and pasted around every reference to weight loss.

"The Indian snacks are usually delicious and mouth watering. Savouries like samosas, aloo tikki etc. are commonly served in India. This section is comprised of recipes which have been passed on for generation together in Indian homes. The crispness and tempting tastes of indian snacks is liked by young and old alike. These can be easily prepared at any time. It is ideal to serve snacks before coffee or tea."
-http://www.indianfoodforever.com/snacks/index.html ...just for kicks.

Friday, August 15, 2008

RadioSnack


While I'm on the concert subject...

A visual from Radiohead at All Points West on 08.08.08

Stadium Snack






As we New Yorkers all know, this is the last year of existence for two of its Great Baseballian Landmarks. Indeed, the fate of the Yankee and Shea Stadiums we all know and love loom in the fateful shadows of the bigger, better stadiums being constructed next door. The city will not let its citizens forget these imepnding realities, what with the commorative magazines, cups, shirts, flags, NYU graduation caps, headline news features, teary team speeches, etc.

But one tidbit of history captured my special attention today as I was reading over the shoulder of some guy's NY Post on the train. On this day in 1965, The Beatles performed the first ever stadium concert at the Mets' Shea, with a then-record-setting attendance of tens of thousands of screaming girls and boys. 55,600, to be quite exact.




On my first (and most likely last) visit to Shea in June, I thought of this day. I think of it again now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6TIEkB4_F8 - "Twist & Shout" on the night
fotografias courtesy of http://www.maccafan.net/

A Minor Introduction, and the First Snack

These are Snacks.

Snacks are These!

What are Snacks?


The word "Snack" can perhaps be defined as "something small to munch on,"


"a morsel of goodness that strings you along to your next meal,"


"an edible tidbit,"


et cetera.


Snack with an s on the end is simply the plural form of this.


For a short or long while now, I have been interested in not only the snack of the mouth, but the snack of the mind. The art of snacking transcends the teeth, I feel, and reaches outwardly toward the morsels of life that spark our neurons, if only temporarily. They can be the random fact we read in a news article that astounds us, the bit of music we hear that etches itself in our memory, the random act of kindness that leaves us a smile, the photograph we see that engages our wonder. They can be anything, anything, and everything, small or big, momentous or minute, the work of a second or many days. They are snacks. And these? These are snacks.


With that, it is my privilege to share them with you.
This is a toadfish.

My father, a great man, always wears the same shirt when mowing the lawn. On it are several toadfish, along with the emboldened phrase "So many toadfish, so little time."

What does it mean??