Opening the Clam

Restaurant Impresario Jeffrey Chodorow on what it’s like to be a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, er, a foodie trapped in a businessman’s body:

“Let me just say this to you,” Mr. Chodorow said over a table loaded with platters of soft lobster pancakes (“my favorite”) and gooey lamb spareribs. “Unfortunately most people – and we’re sort of changing that now – but most people thought of me as a wealthy investor guy who just invested money in restaurants. A business person who just opened up these mega-restaurants, and it was just about the money.”

“But that was so far from the truth,” he continued, sounding vaguely distressed as he picked at a dumpling with a fork. “You know how they say, ‘I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body?'”

Across the table, Karine Bakhoum, Mr. Chodorow’s friend and public relations adviser, dropped a chopstick. “Oh please, please!” she said. “Don’t print that! He’s a foodie.” She turned to Mr. Chodorow. “You’re a foodie!”

“I’m a foodie,” Mr. Chodorow said agreeably. “Trapped in a business person’s body. People say about me, I’d go around the world for the opening of a clam.”

Great Moments in Failure

Major beverage company attempts to raise the world’s largest popsicle in Union Square, ice chunk melts in summer sun and leaks into the street, objective fails:

Under the noontime sun of New York’s first day of summer, [Beverage Company], the soft drink maker, answered the question of whether a 171/2-ton Popsicle can be made to stand upright in Union Square.

It cannot.

In a brave attempt to surpass a Guinness record – “The World’s Largest Popsicle” – [Beverage Company] mixed and froze a gargantuan icy doppelganger of its new kiwi-strawberry flavored [Beverage Company] on Ice. Then the frozen treat was hauled by freezer truck from Edison, N.J., and raised with an enormous crane in Manhattan.

Alas, like James Arness in the 1951 alien thriller “The Thing From Another World,” the giant [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and “Popsicle”] began to melt. Soon pedestrians were fleeing in not-quite terror, fire trucks were converging and the police were closing off streets to contain the publicity stunt gone wrong.

[Beverage Company] officials first started to worry when the pink liquid began to flow onto East 17th Street. They feared cyclists and automobiles would slip in the ooze.

Ice sculpture specialists who were helping [Beverage Company] with the publicity event also wondered whether the [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and “Popsicle”] was beginning to become hollow in the middle and would topple when set upright.

[Beverage Company] officials then decided to stop the [Word Combining Beverage Company Name and “Popsicle”]-raising at a crowd-disappointing 25-degree angle. The mushy giant block was then trucked away and a television-sized ice sculpture in the shape of the [Beverage Company] logo took its place.

Geology Lesson To Metropolitan Diary Entry In Less Than Six Seconds!

I can’t believe that of all the quotes to pull out of this Times article about the mammoth pothole that formed over the weekend on 56th Street I’m going to pull out such a cloying, obviously Metropolitan Diary-worthy one such as this:

“I told my son that that’s exactly how the Grand Canyon was formed,” said John Trials, who took a break from his job at Xerox at 40 West 57th Street to examine the hole around noon yesterday. “It’s amazing what a little water can do.”

But I did!

Where else does a pothole become a geology lesson? Only in New York, Kids! Only in New York! [That loud crash being the sound of Cindy Adams bitchslapping me. Ouch!]

And There Are A Lot of Red Lights In This City!

The president of one of the two firefighters’ unions is telling his men to adhere to stricter national guidelines calling for firetrucks to come to a complete stop at red lights and stop signs, even though City regulations allow firetrucks to cautiously proceed through them. Predictably, response times have gone up. Go figure!

The New Metrosexual

It has been a few years — we are obviously way past due for another annoying term describing stylish straight men!

In any other paper, paragraphs such as this might be considered offensive — good thing we’re reading the Times’ Sunday Styles section:

Of course there are still places that gay men will go that straight men will not. The Speedo swimsuit is still off limits to even the most vain heterosexual American men, as is knowing the words to Kylie Minogue’s latest hit single.

As to the term itself, we are being purposely vague lest it becomes popular.