A Bottle Of White, A Bottle Of Red, Perhaps A Bottle Of Rose Instead

Do you wonder if recipients of the Billy Joel scholarship will ever feel a little lame? NYU announces the first year’s winners:

Several graduate students in the department of music and performing arts professions were awarded a total of $500,000 from the Billy Joel Scholarship fund this summer.

In its first year, the fund will cover part of the tuiton for three Steinhardt School of Education students: Yuval Cohen of Jerusalem; Peter Cruz of Perth Amboy, N.J.; and Michael Eckroth of Las Vegas. All of these students started at NYU this September.

. . .

A multi-Grammy winner and 2002 Musicares Person of the Year, Billy Joel — whose daughter, Alexa Ray, attended NYU’s musical theater program — is a supporter of musical education.

“Billy Joel’s extraordinary talents as a composer and a performer, and the impact of his work on the musical scene and industry resonate perfectly with NYU Steinhardt’s numerous bridges to the music profession,” said Lawrence Ferrara, chair of the music and performing arts department, in a statement.

That seems a little effusive.

Metal Machine Music

This city is making you deaf:

Researchers at Columbia University found subway noise inside the cars and on station platforms regularly exceeds safe limits. Riding the trains for just 30 minutes a day can eventually lead to permanent hearing damage, experts say.

“By itself, riding long enough could definitely put your hearing at risk,” said Dr. Robyn Gershon, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and lead author of the study. “Once the damage starts, it passes a threshold and keeps adding and keeps adding, and pushes you over the edge.”

Regular subway noise averages about 95 decibels, but Columbia researchers found it reached 106 decibels at some subway platforms. A diesel truck generally produces 100 decibels of noise and a lawn mower 107 decibels.

Environmental Protection Agency standards recommend keeping exposure to 100 decibels of noise to less than 90 seconds.

The article goes on to note by way of comparison that rock concerts are about 110 decibels.

See also: In The Eternal Words Of Jimi, Cover Your Ears!

That’s Water Street, Brooklyn, Not Water Street, Manhattan

DUMBO may not have a lot of amenities, but it is home to a rising number of lawyers:

“We’re getting more conventional tenants,” said Chris Havens, director of leasing for Two Trees Management, the area’s main property owner. “Four years ago we had two law firms. Now, we have eight. Though some of the firms moving here have a little bit of edge and are a little more informal.”

Of Dumbo’s 1.5 million square feet of commercial space, roughly half is rented by artists and the rest is now being used for office space, Havens said. “We’re still renting to artists. The change is that these are people who are selling art.”

Court Street has hundreds of attorneys, Havens said. “Costs are really going up there. So, if they’re not running back and forth all day to court, then they can come down to us.”

Three financial firms recently leased space at 45 Main St., including a consulting group that has offices in Lower Manhattan, an investment banking firm with offices in Rockefeller Center and a Brooklyn Heights-based asset management company. Also, a Scandinavian bank opened backup trade space.

“That wouldn’t have happened five years ago,” Havens said. “The buildings weren’t as renovated. Dumbo didn’t have the reputation.”

Location Scout: DUMBO.

Gersh Kuntzman Has Blood On His Hands

Gersh Kuntzman goes out on the handle of a grimy deep fryer to confirm your worst fears — Crisco really does taste better:

[Brooklyn chef Alan] Harding fired up the deep fryer and I melted some Crisco in a pan. When both were ready, we dropped the potato slices into the hot oil — and were stunned to find that the potato chips made in the canola oil and the Crisco were identical. If anything, the Crisco chips were crispier.

“Just like those old Southern ladies always told me: Always fry in Crisco,” Harding said.

I wasn’t convinced, though, and asked Harding to bump it up a notch (as Emeril might say). He pulled out two chicken breasts and pan-seared one in butter and oil — in the classic French tradition — and the other in Crisco.

I chopped shallots.

As the chicken cooked, Harding readied some wine, heavy cream and mustard, and I realized that he was cooking his own version of a legendary dish known as “Kuntzman’s Seduction Chicken,” a main course that dates back to my single days, when I served it whenever I wanted to impress a woman. For years, I had sporadic success with the dish — although all that butter and cream typically left my dates feeling bloated and in need of a nap (a chaste nap, to boot).

Like so many things, if I knew then what I know now, I might have done much better: The “Seduction Chicken” cooked in the Crisco actually turned out lighter and more flavorful than the one Harding made in butter.

When there are so many more enjoyable ways to destroy your body (heroin, for example!), dying from fried chicken seems like one of the lamer ways to go. Then again, the contrarian pushback is obviously on:

Banning [trans fats] may not save 500 lives a year in New York, but it may well save some. Whether you turn out to be one of the lucky ones would depend not just on the heart risks you bring to the table, but also on what replacements the cooks use.

For many foods requiring hard fats, particularly baked goods, the tastiest alternatives to partially hydrogenated oils are tropical oils, like palm oil and coconut oil, or butter. Loaded with artery-blocking saturated fat, they are the very ingredients health advocates shooed us away from not so long ago.

New York’s health department has encouraged restaurants to return to butter, for instance, if that’s what it takes to rid certain menu items of trans fat. Saturated fat is at least a natural constituent of our diets, according to officials, whereas trans fats are essentially chemical abominations that can no longer be countenanced.

For restaurant patrons who long ago learned to avoid butter and skip the bacon, all this amounts to a Hobbesian dilemma. Better saturated fat, the heart-stopping devil you know? Or trans fat, the heart-stopping devil you’ve just been introduced to?

No surprise, then, that many people are cynical about the proposed ban. Grand public health gestures make for perilous public relations. Not so long ago, remember, eggs were causing heart attacks. Vegetable oils were causing cancer.

And the saturated fats that we’re supposed to be using again — whose idea was it to avoid those? Oh. Right.

Where’s this coming from, the freakin’ Manhattan Institute or something? Nope, just the Times Health section . . . this from the same publication that opined “New Yorkers could use more pressure toward healthy behavior.”

The Only Thing In Law Enforcement That Should Be Pushing 90 Is A Dodge Charger*

OK, last time was pushing it but this really would be going too far:

Yes, he is 87 years old. And yes, he is not up for re-election for another three years. But Robert M. Morgenthau, who has been the Manhattan district attorney pretty much since the dawn of time, is gearing up for 2009.

Next Monday, his campaign committee is holding a fund-raising cocktail party, with tickets at $150 to $1,000, and it expects about 75 guests, said Julie S. Nadel, who was a coordinator for Mr. Morgenthau in the Democratic primary last year.

The invitation notes that the party will occur on National Boss Day, a nod to the fact that Mr. Morgenthau has been known as “the Boss” to hundreds of lawyers who have worked for him in the past 45 years: he had been United States attorney in Manhattan before becoming district attorney.

Mr. Morgenthau has not publicly announced whether he intends to run again at age 90, and he did not respond to a request for comment left with his office.

*Leslie Crocker Snyder has our permission to use this slogan on her ’09 campaign bumper stickers. (And in case you forgot about Dodge Chargers.)