newyorkette

(Note the sausage detail on the ceiling.)

Baltimore has lots of faces—the astonishingly good (and also astonishingly free) Walters Art Museum, the plasticky and scrubbed if benignly pleasant waterfront, some new little fusion restaurants that could, the grim dead-end commerce echoed in The Wire, all those others I haven’t seen—and, of course, plenty of history. My aunt Bridget grew up there, and on a trip into the city she introduced Carolita and me to a few places she’d seen change a lot over the years. The old department stores, abandoned (white flight, I gather), their gorgeous edifices looking lonely on the nearly empty street. Drusilla’s Books, an antiquarian bookstore almost too perfect to be real, which everyone who cares about such things should keep in business by frequenting its website. The strip-joint and porn-shop block called The Block, which used to feature some famous burlesque dancers, said Bridget, and which now has a phalanx of cop cars poised to bear down if anything especially untoward should go down. It all seemed tame and low-rent rather than Sin City, like a quickie trip back to a few storefronts of the old 42nd St., but I did keep my eye on the basically genial-seeming sleazemongers as we strolled with my beloved girl cousin Jane at my side.

One of the other historic sites we stopped by was the Lexington Market. I just learned this from a Baltimore civic website: “Baltimore’s Lexington Market, the world’s largest, continuously running open-stall food market, has operated since 1782 at the same site it occupies today on the city’s West Side. General John Eager Howard, a hero of the American Revolution, donated the land for the market, named for the Battle of Lexington, on his return from the war.” Battles since include the economic downturn of the city proper; though genuinely bustling, the Lexington Market is surrounded by and filled with the clear signs of hard times. It’s also filled with delicious food. I understand Carolita and Bridget loved the sandwiches they had from the fish stand, but what I wanted was sausage: something like a bratwurst, which I can never find on the East Coast. If Manhattan still had a true German neighborhood, I bet I’d be able to find bratwurst there instead of having to rely on having to go all the way to Madison, WI, to visit State Street Brats or, better, have something properly soaked in beer and turned on a backyard grill. Anyway, a lot at Lexington Market looked tempting, but there was only one lunch on my mind as soon as I saw Polock Johnny’s, despite the Sausage Master and the Konstant’s Hot Dogs (as well as the pleasingly named Omlet Side Show and the best not thought about Cattleman’s Pride) elsewhere in the market. The other thing on my mind was the very unmodern and un-New York name “Polock Johnny’s,” plus the sausages lovingly painted on the booth’s ceiling.

Well, the Beef Polish, which Jane and I both had with ketchup (we keep it simple, despite the tempting extras listed above), was delicious, filling, resistant but not tough, tangy, juicy, and toxic in just the right ways. We did not require a napkin to blow our noses (.05, 3 for .10), since it wasn’t very spicy, and although “A bag because yours is breaking” is an affectingly poignant phrase (and only costs a quarter), we didn’t need that, either. The Beef Polish completely hit the spot, and across the aisle was a chocolate shop that provided some locally made sweets, including some not at all bad marzipan dipped in milk chocolate. Nearby, a band played; Baltimoreans talked, snacked, and danced. If I could find sausages this good in a market in my city, with decor this snappy to match, I’d dance too. Next time I go, I’ll have a Muffinski.

Polock Johnny’s
Lexington Market, 200 N. Paca St., Baltimore

Guest blogger: Emily Gordon, a.k.a. Emdashes

(image: carolita johnson)

Jane Mayer’s piece, “Whatever it takes,” about the television series (which I love), “24″ and its rather twisted creator, Joel Surnow, addresses the suspected effects of the show on the American public, but fails to address the possibility that people who allow a fictional (verging on action comics) television show to influence their convictions on the subject of torture and human rights are in need of psychological observation, and certainly not fit to govern or work in the military:

Laura Ingraham, the talk-radio host, has cited the show’s popularity as proof that Americans favor brutality. “They love Jack Bauer,” she noted on Fox News. “In my mind, that’s as close to a national referendum that it’s O.K. to use tough tactics against high-level Al Qaeda operatives as we’re going to get.”

Let’s hope addled minds like Laura Ingraham are not common in Washington. Because my appreciaton of the show is proof that I like a good suspense thriller on a Monday night, and not of any belief that torture is an effective means of extracting truth from a terrorist. If only it were.

Richard Brody’s title to his review of the Robert Mitchum DVD collection should get an award of some kind: “The Credible Hulk.”

Kate Julian quotes “The Third Man” on Switzerland’s contribution to the world in her Tables for Two on the Swiss eatery “Trestle on Tenth,” which seems a cruel generalization. So here’s another, positive one: I think the Swiss compensate for their dull history with the most considerate and consistently pleasant lovers, as generally agreed amongst the people who have experienced them. And the country itself inspires such amusing theses as my friend, Juan, once presented, proving that Geneva does not actually exist.

Tessa Hadley’s “The Swan” is a nice variation on the spouse-gone-awry template, injected with with a feeling of senselessness that for some reason reminded me of “Straw Dogs,” although there was no violent gang in it. It was as if the gang had been internalized, somehow. See if you agree.

Meanwhile, David Sedaris continues to force himself to do odd things in order to write humorously and without perjuring himself about them: this time, using yellow water from a flower vase to make his coffee, and possibly using chicken broth to shave, and champagne to flush the toilet, in “The way we are.” I believe this is a cry for help from darkest Normandy. The best part of the story is the blast from the past, leading to the reflections on sexuality and traditional roles.

(image: carolita johnson)

Rest assured, if you don’t have a Valentine this year, there’s really nothing to worry about — even idiots, creeps and xenophobes have valentines, and you’re actually half-decent, aren’t you? Love is in the hearts of even the most horrible people, and lavished on even the most manifestly undeserving. Love is totally blind and random, and thank goodness for that!

This is a drawing I did in 1998, when I was working 9 to 5, deeply depressed and in debt. It’s part of a series of stickers that I distributed to friends to stick on street signs and restaurant bathrooms from Berlin, Paris, Minneapolis to Little Neck, NY. It was just one of those things I did to keep from killing my boss. (He had a great printer! And we became great friends once I quit!)

Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
xox

(Pat Moriarity’s “Dead Earth,” for sale on Comic Art Collective, for pretty cheap! Click on the image for details.)

Want to buy original artwork from alternative comics? I just discovered the Comic Art Collective, where the range of styles is as extreme as the talent. Reasonable prices, too — see above! (Cheaper than New Yorker cartoonists’ work in many cases, depending on the size and level of demand, it seems).

(image: carolita johnson, varmint, God.)

The best line in the whole magazine, and the most pertinent for me this week came from Jonathan Rosen’s critical piece, “Missing Link,” about the renewed interest in the story of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s less lucky, less wiley (and, notably, less unwilling to endure the slings and arrows of a public unwilling to believe their uncle was a monkey) contemporary:

“(…)when a later British biologist, J. B. S. Haldane, was pressed by a clergyman on the nature of God, he reportedly said, “He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.’”

Alfred Russel Wallace was a much more interesting character than Darwin, bolder, poorer — a self-made man, all the things we like our heros to be. Maybe he’s just the thing the evolutionists need, now that Darwin’s integrity has been called to question. Me, personally, I think there is strong evidence to to support the belief in an annoying prankster God, the more I see of the world.

For example, the reason the above quote was so pertinent is because I recently had the opportunity to admire the evolutionary accomplishment of New York’s most common beetle: the German cockroach. One made a spectacular entrance into my life yesterday, when I opened the hall closet door and noticed a strangely slow-falling, unidentified small object trace a straight, blurry brownish line in the air from the top of the door to the floor. I bent over to see what had fallen, and lo and hehold, it was one of God’s favorite creatures. Just think: that closet door was its proportional equivalent of one of the Twin Towers, and that cockroach simply landed gently. Never mind what kind of guts it must have taken for it to decide to make that kind of a jump. Cockroaches are like mini-Supermen.

But perhaps they also have hubris. I believe that cockroach was congratulating itself, patting itself on the back, feeling all fired up with adrenaline, thinking, “Yeehaaaa! That was invigorating!” Perhaps it was even feeling rather good, or even a little too smug, about how physically superior, proportionally, it was than myself. Because it remained there for a second too long before taking the few steps that got my own adrenaline flowing. I had a narrow box in my hand that contained a heavy ballast for my bathroom light fixture, and instinctively brought it down with a big CLACK on this amazing little daredevil.

(The Hudson River, last weekend, as a slushy.)

Brrr!

(rejected cartoon by carolita johnson)

I thought I hadn’t sold a cartoon yesterday, so was a little grumpy all day. Then the email “ok” came at about 9:30pm. I guess conde nast has a really slow email server, because I got another email from our sales rep at midnight. Anyway, to celebrate, I’m putting up a recent reject. It’s very silly. Think of me what you will, but I like it. It’s gone into the pile of submissions for Diffee’s upcoming Rejection Collection II, for yet another shot at rejection.

(”Train view: Little Neck Bay,” by carolita johnson. Click on the image for a larger version.)

When I was a college student, I used to commute every day from Little Neck to Manhattan. Besides the Great Neck passengers making fun of my Japanese designer outfits, the thing that bleakened my spirits the most was realizing how many hours I spent commuting. So, to make the trip seem worth it of itself (rather than just as a means to an end) I decided to look at the bay, very carefully every day as we passed it between Douglaston and Bayside, and force myself to notice and name the colors to myself in an exercise of appreciation and mental imaging.

This is my first painting of the view from the train window. Not done yet, but nearly.

(image: carolita johnson)

Running behind because I went away for the weekend, but no doubt I’m not the only one behind in my reading.

Beware of “Good People,” they’re a mess. By David Foster Wallace.

Ryszard Kapuscinski’s personal history piece, “The Open World,” in the be-careful-what-you-wish-for department, is beautiful, and the translation sparkles.

Peter Schjeldahl’s “Different Strokes,” about Gayford’s new book about Paul Gauguin’s sojourn with Van Gogh in Arles (”The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles” (Little, Brown; $24.99) which is as exciting as any gossip you’ll read in The Post, but much more refined.

The view from 137th street, facing northwest.

Who lives in that giant building? Something I wonder all the time. And more importantly, where’s the snow?