Old Spice

Hello World, Yipes - here's yet another Friday the 13th! This is the second of three that we're going to have this year (be on the lookout for the last one in November) which will happen in any year that starts on a Thursday, regardless of whether it's a Leap Year or not. And speaking of leaping, it was last Saturday when the poor huddled masses, yearning to breathe free (or something like that, anyway) had to leap forward into the confounded tomfoolery of Daylight Saving Time, like it or not, and lose an hour to boot. Fortunately, many electronic devices nowadays build in the time change to their programming, and take care of that tiresome chore for you automatically, and thanks ever so. On our own around here, we mostly changed over only the important clocks that need to be right, like the alarm clocks, and then leave everything else to be handled in dribs and drabs, or just ignored altogether. I've given up on the idea that the dashboard clock in the car is going to sync up with the rest of humanity, at least until the hour switches back over to Standard Time in the winter, and I don't mind saying, not a moment too soon for my tastes. The addle-pated morons behind this cockamamie scheme may think that they're somehow saving me an hour of daylight with this nonsense, but I will never get back all of the time I've wasted chasing around and changing clocks twice a year, and that's a plain fact. Anyone in the local area can tell you that Monday was the first nice day of the entire year so far, being beautifully sunny all day, with temperatures that went all the way up to a balmy 52 - which was a virtual heat wave in these parts, after the single digits and below zero wind chills from just a couple of weeks ago, thanks not. I imagine that the region was dotted with besotted pedestrians out strolling in the lovely weather for a change, and I have no doubt that tank tops, shorts and flip-flops were the order of the day, even with the calendar fixed firmly at the beginning of March. For anyone who was out in the middle of the day, as I was, you couldn't help but notice that everyone seemed to take the opportunity to break out their hogs, like it was some sort of competition, and if you didn't get your bike out on March 9th, you'd never live it down. I never saw so many motorcycles in my life, in every shape and size, and every which where besides. As harbingers of Spring, apparently bikers returning to the highways and byways, are right up there with the swallows returning to Capistrano, I dare say. Also on the home front, it came as a welcome surprise when a friend invited us to join her for a trip to the movies, and since we all wanted to see "The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," the choice was simple. We had enjoyed the first one immensely, and although it's a well-known axiom that sequels can be tricky to pull off, we nonetheless had high hopes for the new offering, in spite of the reviews, which we thought were petty and captious. But this time, the critics were more right than we were, and I thought not only that it was not as good as the original, but riddled with shortcomings in many different ways. It made no sense at all for anyone who hadn't seen the first one, but even with that advantage, the story had a lot of trouble holding together in any meaningful way, and the cursory plot, slight as it was, often seemed to be its own worst enemy. The whole thing was much more scattershot overall, with any number of extraneous elements being introduced along the way, but never developed, so they ended up being somehow uninteresting as well as distracting at the same time. Like its predecessor, it had some amusing moments, but it was more depressing than it probably meant to be, and even the parts that weren't particularly gloomy, were more wistful than cheerful. The whole effect seemed oddly sad, like going back to an old favorite childhood hangout, only to find it all tattered and derelict in the cold hard light of the present day, and not the wonderland of indulgent memory. One unfortunate victim of this somber narrative was the wildly rambunctious and over-the-top wedding celebration at the end, which compared to the rest of the film, was so jarringly out of place that it was much too inappropriate to be any fun at all. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I'm a big believer in the redeeming powers of IMAX and 3-D, but even I have to admit that they would have had no success in righting this foundering ship, try as they might. In keeping with the cultural Theme Of The Day, we left the movie theater, and wended our way across town to the new Spice Indian Bistro, which has been up and running for a few weeks in our fair city. Alert readers may recall a previous visit of ours to the Calcutta Curry House, which I would describe in kindness as an upscale anomaly at a storefront in that downtrodden neighborhood, hemmed in by the ubiquitous nail salon, pizza parlor, laundromat, Chinese take-out, barber shop, sports bar, karate studio, bank and dry cleaners. It appeared to be a nice place, but they never seemed to have any customers, and the few times when we ate there, we literally had the place to ourselves. At the time, we wondered, often and at length, how they possibly stayed in business. Well, as it turns out, they didn't. One day when we were picking up pizza from the same block, we noticed there was a new banner tacked up over their sign, with the new name, and hopefully a better idea for attracting customers than the previous establishment. For ourselves, we found the new place was not much of an improvement, in fact, it had some significant drawbacks to start with, and even more as the night wore on. The limited menu had far less variety, which for me was especially noticeable with their lassi (what we would call a fruit smoothie) which had been reduced to only one flavor, and I don't mind saying, I'm not a big fan of mango in any case. Even worse, the service was appalling, not only because the food took over 45 minutes to reach our table, but they also forgot our drinks, and mixed up our appetizers so that we didn't get what we wanted, but instead got stuck with some unidentified items that we hadn't ordered. (It also took 30 minutes before we got any, so they hardly qualified as appetizers at that point, I'm thinking.) Our dinner companion never received her meal at all, so she shared Bill's, and neither of them cared for it much, and for all the amount of time it took to get served, the rice seemed just like minute rice to me, and thanks so much not, Uncle Ben. On the other hand, I thought their paneer naan was excellent, and the shahi paneer that I had could not have been better, so I can't say that it was a total loss after all. But it was way too expensive for all but the most forgiving patrons to excuse the slipshod service and interminable wait for even the most routine menu items, and once again, we walked out the door wondering how a place like that stays in business. They won't be getting our business again, that's for sure, and you can believe me when I say that "The Third Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," even if there is such a thing, will not change our minds on that score. In other local news, anyone familiar with The Queen City on the Sound (only 45 minutes from Broadway, mind you) would certainly remember the iconic Thru-Way Diner on the edge of town, right off the highway, and a fixture in New Rochelle since, well, pretty much forever. (That is to say, that nobody can actually remember how long it had been there, although old-timers claim it was a stagecoach stop during the Colonial period, while others recall it as a caravan way-station on the old spice route in Biblical times. The dinosaurs assure me that they used to go there in the middle of the night for pancakes and ice cream sundaes, but frankly, their memory is notoriously suspect, and I put no faith in their recollections.) Being open 24-hours, it was a haven for truck drivers, a beacon for shift-workers, a respite for weary travelers at all times, and a welcoming destination for hearty appetites, from the lonely single all the way up to large groups. Bill and I were no strangers to the place ourselves, and I can tell you that their signature potato pancakes were absolutely out of this world, and I have never had anything like them, before or since. Suddenly, after decades (or centuries, or millennia, depending on who you talk to) out of the blue, the property owners (Boo! Hiss!) sold the parcel out from under the diner in 2008, just like that, without so much as a by-your-leave, sending the loyalists into paroxysms of grief on an epic scale, that were not to be assuaged with the thought that there were still other diners in the area where they could take their patronage. For their part, the new owners (Boo! Hiss!) tore down the old relic and put up a Walgreens drug store in its place, which promptly went out of business after all that, which is exactly what they deserved, and that's not just the potato pancakes talking, believe me. In any event, the good news is that the company behind the Nautilus Diner in Mamaroneck stepped into the breach, and started building a new diner across the street from the previous location, which they say, should be open any old time now. We decided to take a drive by there last week, and sure enough, where there had been nothing but a pile of rubble for long and despairing months, now an actual diner structure has arisen from the debris, looking just about ready to throw open its doors to a clamoring public once again, and it goes without saying, not a moment too soon, by golly. Of course, if they hire the wait staff from the Spice Indian Bistro, all bets are off. Elle