Monthly Archives: March 2011

Am I the only the person who does not like cheeseburgers? Why does everyone insist on ordering it only? I like variety. I enjoy variety.  As a well-nourished person, I like and enjoy variety in my meals. Why take a menu or why even order in the first place if you’re just going to eat the same thing over again?

I am a man, who likes his burgers. I believe that the cheese ruins the taste of the most important aspect of a hamburger, the beef. Whether I use Angus or a piece of ground meat, I consider myself an expert in this delicious craft. One may call me a George Foreman Grill technician.  Do not expect this technician to use any ketchup!

A well done 9oz hamburger from Kool Bloo, 221 East 23rd Street, New York

Adding ketchup to a burger is like adding makeup to a woman. Does ketchup make the Burger taste better? Does makeup make a woman look better? Did I just compare hamburgers to women? In my opinion a good hamburger, just like a good women, is hard to come by.

McDonald’s burgers are made out of plastic.  Burger King’s burgers are elastic.  Wendy’s burgers look Jurassic. Not all burgers are created equally. There are places where quality out rules quantity.

What you can expect in Burger Bistro

Burger Bistro is where fancy burgers meet casual prices. This burger establishment joins many gourmet restaurants on Third Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. What separates this small and cozy restaurant from the others is that anyone can customize their meal in any way they want. This customization does not only include how you want the meat cooked. From caramelized onions to guacamole, one may add any topping on their menu.  Even if you’re crazy to like cheese on your burger, do not expect to only have American cheese on their menu. One may put chesses such as: gouda, asiago, pepper jack, and etc. The quality was great and the portion size was just right.  I had a well-done burger on whole-wheat buns with Portobello mushrooms and peppers.  It was great.  I love to eat hamburgers but just do not put cheese and ketchup on it.

FIlm Forum, 209 W Houston Street

It started in 1970 with only 50 folding chairs, one projector and a very small annual budget of only $19,000. Today, Film Forum Theater located on 209 W Houston St, counts with 3 screens, 489 seats, 67 employees, 4000 members, and an incredible annual budget of $250,000 and is open 365 days a year.             

Film Forum opened with a specific purpose: to present two very unique and admiring forms of film, New York City premieres of American Independent films and Foreign Art films. Film Forum is the only nonprofit cinema of New York City and one of the few in the entire United States. One of its screens is dedicated to both forms of film with very popular selections. This distinguished theater presents New Yorkers with a variety of films which deal with cultural, political and historical issues in today’s world.

As of right now, Film Forum is presenting Taxi Driver, Bill Cunningham, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and A Tribute to Jack Garfein.

Despite the many years I have lived in New York, I had never heard of Film Forum before. However, I opened up my mind and decided to give this theater a chance. I went in an attempt to watch a film, but unfortunately I was not able to make it on time for the show. However, I stayed in an effort to look around the theater. The staff was incredibly friendly and helpful. I felt comfortable being there and I was eager to go back with a group of friends and actually watch a film. While I was looking around, I was able to talk for a few minutes with two girls, Carlina Paniagua and Isbelia Cruz. They have been friends for about 10 years and they are both huge fanatics of Independent Films. These two girls make it a habit to go to Film Forum at least once a month. “In Previous years, we would come here about once every two weeks, or if they were showing highly interesting films we would come more frequently” says Carlina.

Unfortunately, the dreadful economy has been one of the major reasons why, not only Carlina and Isbelia, but other loyal members of Film Forum have been forced to reduce the number of visits they make and as a result, they miss out on great Independent and Foreign Art films, but as Isbelia says, “Hopefully the economy will rise up again so we will be able to enjoy Film Forum as much as we did before, or at least as much as we would like to enjoy it.”

Film Forum’s mission when it first opened was simple: to present programs with attention to unique cinematic qualities, and historical importance either individually or within genres relevant to today’s world. Today, Film Forum still serves its mission and it is the leading movie house for Independent and Foreign Art films. In 41 years, Film Forum has been able to grow and provide those indies and foreign art films fanatics and let’s hope they will continue to provide great entertainment and great art for another 41 years or more.

My wife and I accepted an invitation to a Purim party at the Willetts Street Jewish Center in Manhattan. Purim or the Feast of Lots is a time of joy for the minor holyday celebrates the thwarting of a plot to kill the Jews in Babylonian exile. It also is time to read the Megillah or Scroll of Esther, and calls for wearing of costumes, eating, ‘parfuming’ or drinking, merrymaking and eating  fruit filled triangular cookies called ‘hamantaschen’.

So it came as no surprise that my wife donned a gaily colored caftan with gold and silver threads and around her neck she wore a family heirloom, an amber oval inscribed with the Shema in Hebrew. Copper toned skin with high cheek bones and slightly slanted dark brown eyes, and her henna touched jet black hair artfully arranged, she looked as though she was Queen Esther or a Berber queen of the Anti Atlas Mountains, at least. Much to her annoyance, I was dressed in my usual ‘shabby chic’.

We did not expect much from the food, which is standard awful institutional dreadful. But we were very much looking forward to lively conversation and much conviviality. Our hopes were quickly dashed by Natasha and Nathan who shared our table. The two Ns, 24 years in America, came from the Soviet Union. Natasha looks like a ‘matryoshka’ doll, small, round and plump with rosy cheeks and alert Meissen blue and unknowing eyes, and wears a wig. Nathan is tall and heavy set; under a baseball cap sits dull brown eyes, and by his coloring he has traces of Kazakh ancestors. His hands, the most noticeable thing about him, are huge with fingers the size of sausages and discolored nails, a testimony to years of hard work.

Natasha did most of the talking, but occasionally Nathan would break into the conversation with his accented English if he were not whispering to her something in Russian.

During the meal of bland turkey meatloaf and soggy green beans and sad looking mashed potatoes, washed down with either Coca Cola or Seltzer or hot tea, Natasha and Nathan kept eyeing my wife Sultana and then me. Natasha was curious first about Sultana’s amber piece of jewelry. Surprised to learn, it was something handed down from generation to generation among my wife’s family who originally lived in the mountains of south Morocco for more than 2000 years. Nathan wanted to know if she adopted her husband’s religion, and what was her Hebrew name. And then he was a little taken aback that although born in North Africa she wasn’t black, since for him all Africans are black.

Nothing seemed to embarrass the couple in expressing their ignorance and prejudices. Nathan wanted to know if Sultana would perform belly dancing on the spot. At that moment, she gave me a weary look. Natasha wanted to know about the hovels she supposed that Sultana  had lived in the mountains or the goats or sheep she had tended as a child or the ‘exotic’ way of ‘primitive’ mountain folk . And, what’s more, she wondered how could my wife have lived among Arabs, for in her neighborhood in Brooklyn had more and more Muslims were moving in and they frightened her. She and Nathan, consequently, were thinking of shifting to another place but the rents being what they are these days, the two Ns are resigning themselves to stay where they are living.

Then Nathan questioned me about my ancestry. Am I of Russian stock? His face froze when he learnt that my family had always lived on either side of the Mediterranean for as far back as we could trace. Since I have light skin and grey eyes, he seemed puzzled. Not happy with that bit of news, he grilled me on my bona fides, my ancestry, my education, my work and my style of life, to which I took great exception.

For Sultana and me, this is a tale many time told. It is a wearing battle, if you think in those terms.

Any time someone hears, say, that Sultana is from Morocco, the high degree of misinformation she hears goes off the Richter scale of the belief. Consequently we inure our mental carapace to weather the storms and high waves of ignorance. Seeing that wild look in my eyes that signaled  I was about to have a sudden moment of madness, Sultana whispered soothing words in French, and my anger calmed. Natasha and Nathan, for us, had gone beyond the bounds of civilized behavior, and I, for one, was looking for way to shut them up.

Call it ‘divine intervention’, when the women Reformed rabbi began reading the Megillah, all conversation ended. Still Natasha and Nathan had to have the final word: they harrumphed that they ‘disapproved’ of women in the rabbinate, as Orthodox and practicing Jews. Nonetheless they stayed for the reading and the stomping and the twirling ‘graggers’ or noisemakers and hissing at the mention of  the name the villain of the story– Haman. They stayed, despite their censoriousness, because they were witnessing for their faith.

As the ceremony ended and the hamantashen — filled with prunes, poppy seeds, apricots, apples, or dates—distributed, the two Ns said they looked forwarded to seeing us again at another party. Sultana and I smiled and the same thought flashed through our long married minds, but I will keep it in the family.