Can we talk?

K, so maybe I'm dating myself, but whatevs ("whatevs" counteracts my oldness by using youth speak). I want to know what happened to Joan Rivers. I remember her from my childhood (sorry, Joan) as this loud, obnoxious, hilarious New York lady. She was, I hate to admit now, a large part of the spell New York had over me (NY still has a spell over me, she's just no longer a part of it, really).

So, she used to be the "young Phyllis Diller," famous for her jokes making fun of herself. Oddly, we had the same major/minor combo in college, English and Anthropology. She's not really from New York, unless you count Westchester, which I don't. I remember her on Carol Burnett (a whole 'nother blog) but mostly the Muppet Show. In college, Todd, Rachel, Irish and I were slightly obsessed with her midnight magic show called "Can we Shop?" It was like late night QVC, but network.

But for all of this, somehow, none of her standup survives, outside some rare records that can't be found easily in my preferred way, on the internet. I just want some verification that she was indeed, the funny woman I remember from my yoot, and not necessarily this plastic faced freaker who really isn't funny at all, not funny on the "red carpet" which I think she's been fired from, in most cases. Anyone? A little help?

Harlem!

I am sorry I've been gone. Things have been happening very quickly and I haven't had time to mull them over in the form of a blog. For those of you still with me, thank you very very much. I will try to reward your patience.

Joe and I now live in Harlem. 141 and Broadway, to be exact. Downtowners (anything south of 100th) think we live far away, our friends in Brooklyn think we live in another time zone (and we think the same of them). But we love our neighborhood. It is largely Latino of varying sources (Dominican, Cuban, Mexican) with pockets of other peoples. Our neighbor across the hall has lived there for 20 years and has an indeterminate number of kids who have a large number of cousins and they all play in the hallway. They play on our stoop (we have 3 steps to our front door) and we often trip over them on our way out. They are too cute to reprimand, and after all, this is their yard.

When we first moved in, we took a walk around the neighborhood and discovered a fantastic old industrial warehouse space being turned into a pizza restaurant. Guess what? It opened. We were out on a stroll and found it with candles on the tables and people inside. So we went in and met the owner, the sole bartender, her sidekick, and the guy they brought from Sorrento to operate the pizza oven they brought from there too. Andres, Marsha, Joe and Francesco. We mentioned to Marsha that we had a favorite Italian place downtown that had an outpost in Harlem and she said, "Max? Andres owns that too. That's his place." Yay! We didn't eat anything because we had already eaten but we did taste some 23 year old rum along side our Peronis. Restaurant review (Covo) coming soon.

So, I don't know if you know this, but Columbia University just bought the majority of our neighborhood. The restaurateurs clearly knew that things would be changing rapidly, and they are right. Stay tuned for all kinds of new things for me to review, including the Thai place going in next door to Covo. Woohoo! Rumors of sushi better start swirling.