vip in the city

John Oliver @ Symphony Space

After a light dinner at the not-so-divey Dive Bar on W. 96th Street — hey, I wasn’t about to cross the picket lines at Saigon Grill — we headed over to Peter Norton Symphony Space for the taping of John Oliver’s upcoming Comedy Central special (scheduled to air on April 20).

We both knew the drill and made sure to arrive early, queuing up for our spots in the cold outside the theatre. And it was a biting, bitter cold, too: the type that chills to the bone, and against which no amount of Starbucks skim chai latte could insulate us. By the time were given the go ahead to file inside, I was in serious need of some warming laughter.

Oliver rose to the occasion brilliantly, delivering the kind of sharp, smirking political commentary — offered in dry British tones, “with more authority than you’re used to hearing” — that makes him such a popular correspondent on The Daily Show. He proved a remarkably good sport, too: about fifteen minutes in, the AV crew lost power to the video screen on stage, requiring Oliver to backtrack and run through a rather lengthy segment of his act several times — with the exact same jokes and “spontaneous” inflection. No doubt a nightmarish scenario for any comedian, but Oliver’s chucklingly rueful gamesmanship earned him an enthusiastic round of applause at the end.

Giving full credit (or blame) to the “10-year old Indonesian boy” to whom he had outsourced his joke-writing, Oliver covered topics ranging from colonialism, how Americans view the rest of the world, the school track incident that led him to pursue a career in comedy over sports, his teary-eyed Pavlovian response to all images backed by cheesy 80s power ballads (looking at you, Divine Miss M) and, with fellow comedian Andy Zaltzman, offered a brilliantly loopy argument on how the erosion of civil freedoms is a valid homeland security strategy, as it eliminates the very thing which the terrorists find most hateful about our country, thereby making us less appealing a target.

Also, some trenchant observations about American culture, as epitomized by the existence of a market for the inflatable floating grill — a barbecuing device used for cooking inside a swimming pool. Oliver cited the ludicrousness of such an invention as definitive proof that in terms of the sheer force of consumerism, America has no peer. Take that, China!

The roots of conspicuous consumption may be traced to post-World War II-era prosperity. We — as Americans, and particularly as New Yorkers — live in a culture driven by “stuff,” where so much of our lives revolves around the acquisition of material things as markers of a certain type of success. I found this recent New York magazine piece particularly resonant: “The Upside of the Downside — Why the Recession May Restore the City We Moved Here For.”

Despite being aware of “how loaded we are, comparatively speaking, and not just loaded in that abstract compared-with-the-developing-world way… loaded compared with most of the people in this city,” I too feel the “psychic effect of living in a place that is so in thrall to money, so dominated by the monoculture of luxury that even if you’re not on the front lines, working for a hedge fund or whatever, the values encroach on your life.”

I don’t know. Maybe that MacBook Air commercial is just getting to me.

Tags: comedy, John Oliver, Symphony Space, UWS

Hot chocolate weather

The City Bakery, which opened on West 18th Street in 1990 and entered the pop culture pantheon with the Season 5 “Critical Condition” episode of “Sex and the City,” has been credited with introducing the city’s first designer hot chocolate. The über-rich, molten concoction — available by the cup ($4.50) or the shot ($2)… add another 50¢ for a homemade marshmallow — is made from a combination of milk, cream, and mostly European melted bar chocolate. No powdered cocoa here: it’s the drink that eats like a meal. The gourmet recipe has been named consistently among the city’s best — earning “four stars” from New York magazine and a mention in the recent New York Times piece on the city’s hot chocolate fetish.

During the entire month of February, as it had for the past 16 years, City Bakery held its own Hot Chocolate Festival, with a different flavored hot chocolate offered daily, in addition to the bakery’s signature blend.

Today’s flavor was “Darkest Dark Hot Chocolate.” Other offerings have ranged from the standard to the intriguing/pause-inducing, including Caramel, Cinnamon, Vanilla Bean, Ginger, Mango Tea, Banana Peel, Tropical, Lemon Licorice and Beer. There’s also a Chili Pepper — though for that flavor combination I like the new-to-my-neighborhood Jacques Torres’ “Wicked” hot chocolate, spiced with allspice, cinnamon, and ground ancho and chipotle chili peppers.

Then on to Aspen on 22nd Street for the Grand Marnier Après-Ski event.

I couldn’t have envisioned a more apropos venue than this Flatiron district restaurant-lounge cum retro ski lodge. Snowy forest photomurals — check! Lucite deer heads and white porcelain antlers mounted on wood paneling — double check! Central fire pit — you know it! Sexy snow bunnies wandered among the guests as a fake snow/foam machine whirred in the corner. I noticed bison sliders being passed around on trays, but in the spirit of après-ski, I made my way to the back bar where steaming cups of Grand Marnier-spiked hot chocolate were being ladled out.

As the boozy warmth spread through me, I wondered how well Aspen’s winter wonderland theme works the rest of the year.

Tags: Aspen, City Bakery, Grand Marnier, hot chocolate, ski

Year of the Rat

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy Lunar New Year, family and friends!

Today marked the beginning of Year 4705 by the Chinese calendar — the start of a 15-day celebration that culminates with the Lantern Festival on the night of the first full moon.

The year of the Rat is the first in the sequence of twelve Chinese zodiac animals, familiar to many via those brightly printed paper placemats in Chinese restaurants of yore: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, ram, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. (Once so popular, I can’t recall the last time I saw one.)

The related children’s story goes that the Jade Emperor wanted to designate a dozen animals for the calendar, and announced a race through a river to determine their order. The cat and the rat, being the worst swimmers, devised a plan to cross the river on the back of the naive and agreeable ox. On the day of the race, though, the competitive rat pushed the cat off into the river, and rode the ox’s horn to victory himself, jumping off at the opposite bank to reach the finish line first. (“You dirty rat!”) As a result of the rat’s betrayal, the cat came in dead last — 13th — and did not get a year named in his honor. Swearing vengeance, the cat has chased the rat for all eternity… and has hated water ever since.

We had plans to check out the new year’s festivities going on in Chinatown this afternoon. I could hear the building din on my approach from the subway on Canal. Here, the madness on Mott. Drums! Lions! Second time in a week I was showered in confetti.

Seemed like a fun idea at the time, but in practice… not so much, after a while. “The crazy secret about New York is that many locals can’t stand crowds.” Word. We hastily decamped to the relative calm of Baxter Street a few blocks away, where we opted instead for a lunch of Vietnamese food that thankfully, did not include rats.

Well, not that we know of, anyway.

Tags: Chinatown, Chinese New Year