Happy Hallowe'en!

It is about this time of year that Americans go absolutely mental. I say 'about this time' because although today is Hallowe'en, they've been working up to it for weeks now.

I was first alerted to the onslaught of holiday fever when we were invited to a pumpkin patch, run by the managers of Rabbit Hutch Towers, a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit confused by its location, in a little park in Tribeca.
'Wow,' I said, 'I can't believe anyone grows pumpkins in Tribeca!'
'No, you jackalope!', TLOML gently corrected me. 'They don't grow them there. They truck them in from Illinois and put them out on display in the park in Tribeca, for people to go and pick them.'

This is no pick-your-own-fruit scenario. By 'pick' they mean 'pick up from a cutesy display'.  Here's a pumpkin patch in sunny Marin County.

There's a massive 15 foot long wall of pumpkins - all shapes and sizes, some ready carved too - in Chelsea Market. I meant to take a photo, but since I always tut loudly at tourists taking photos of groceries in there, I felt I couldn't. Not even in the name of art my blog. Here's one I nicked from someone's blog:

Not content with having an enormous pumpkin patch thing, Chelsea Market is also leading the way in spooky displays. Apparently this one has caused a bit of a stir, for being too ghoulish.

They love a ghoulish display, do our American brethren. This effort has dominated the lobby of Rabbit Hutch Towers for a couple of weeks.

And people who live in houses have made the most of having their own front door by, um, covering it in fake cobwebs and putting pumpkins and skulls outside.

No, I don't know why either. But when I ask - especially when I take my special, cynical tone - TLOML accuses me of being unfestive, or unAmerican, or some such. (He will change his tune when I unveil the gingerbread house I am currently fantasizing about constructing).

So, tonight's the night all this pumpkin spookiness really peaks - and I am home alone. I was thinking of baking some cookies for trick-or-treaters - glad of the excuse to create some full fat treats and then foist them on others. But apparently kids these days aren't allowed to take anything other than a heavily wrapped, additive-full candy bar. I think it's in case that scarey English lady in Apartment P has poisoned the homemade cookies.

Instead, I am going to ignore the whole shebang and watch an old episode of Sex and the City. Bah humbug indeed!

Weather Up

I was going to do all sorts of fun and useful things today. I was going to go for a nice long run. I was going to take photos for my blog. And I was going to buy butter and fruit.

Then I looked out of the window.

TLOML and I had been warned to get our cold weather gear early. We hit T.J.Maxx a couple of weeks ago and bought ludicrous padded coats.

TLOML's duvet of a coat

I hope, I pray, I don't really need this coat

At the time I laughed - and cheaped out - because I couldn't imagine needing to wear this coat more than occasionally, and surely not till December. How naive. I bet T.J.Maxx today is full of fools who just moved here from California, in their flipflops and t-shirts (which were wearable in NYC just a week ago), panic buying down coats.

Incidentally, Weather Up is also the name of a great unmarked-door bar in Tribeca, which is perfect for afternoon drinking (not least because it's so hip that night-time drinking there is probably a little obnoxious). But on a snowy, sleety October day, we are not prepared to weather up, even for Weather Up.

We may have the kit, but we're still not leaving the rabbit hutch. We're hunkering down with that massive fish stew.

Sating the beast

The beast of TLOML's appetite, that is. He does like to eat well. This photo is a case in point.

This is what happens when he is tasked with getting 'a pound of fish and a couple of handfuls of shellfish': a pound and a half of fish, some crab, two lobster tails, a dozen shrimps, scallops, and clams, and two octopus (octupii?). To be fair, he burned about 3000 calories swimming just before he hit the fishmongers. Not only does he like to eat a fair amount, he also insists good quality. So this was all topnotch seafood. (And we now have an excellent hearty fishy stew to see us through the winter.)

Soon after we moved into the rabbit hutch, TLOML had paced out the surrounding area and identified a shortlist of good pizza slice joints. Since then he has done solid research and reviewed all of them, some multiple times.

So when we hanker for pizza on our way home, our hunt is targeted. We're like a smart missile, thanks to all TLOML's groundwork. Before midnight, it's Gotham, if we miss Gotham we head for Brick Oven, and only after 1am will we eat a Stella's slice. Ray's is shunned at all times. My guy is no fool.


It was this same approach, deployed over years of living in LA, that meant he could name the best burger within a two mile radius wherever you were in the city. His opinion on the best steak (Mastros) and sushi (Nobu Malibu) were similarly well founded.

Like I said, he enjoys quality food. So doing extensive research is really not a chore for him. And he is truly scientific about it. When someone says casually 'oh that was the best burger I've ever had', he pounces, notebook and pen at the ready, with questions like 'but what's your criteria?' and 'what kind of bun was it?'.

Six months into our New York era, and in addition to the pizza research, he has at least narrowed down the burger options, to land on Smith and Mills as offering the best gourmet burger downtown. But notice those caveats - there may be non-gourmet burgers, and in midtown or uptown, we are yet to discover. Oh, the pressure!

As for steak, well, the jury's still out. Strip House, Peter Luger and Del Frisco have been sampled. None met the standard. Tonight we will hit Quality Meats, working our way down TLOML's steakhouse shortlist. We're dining there with, and on the advice of, our favourite New Yorker. And since she introduced us to Smith and Mills' fancy burger, we could be onto a winner.

Mastro's.... Will Quality Meats meet the standard?

I certainly hope so, as there are a heck of a lot of steakhouses and burger joints out there. And we haven't even got close to answering the sushi question. *Sigh* So many restaurants and so little time (3 months and counting).

Why college football is more fun than the NFL

During the reunion weekend, TLOML and I went to a football game. Stanford have had an unusually strong start to the season, due in part to their star quarterback who will apparently be 'Number One Draft Pick'. The draft is when the NFL teams select from all the college football players who want to go pro, with the worst NFL team getting to choose first. It's kind of a redistribution of talent.

The fact that Stanford football would produce the number one draft pick, Luck, is getting the alumni all confused and excited. Apparently when TLOML and his moron-bowl drinking buddies were at the Farm, they were a bit rubbish at football. Not anymore.

Campus was all a-buzz about the game.

It even made the front page. Admittedly, of the Stanford Daily.

The Bookstore, with a Stanford athletics merchandise section bigger than most Footlockers.

The queue at the Bookstore, two hours before the game.

The stadium, which holds over fifty thousand spectators, was sold out. It was packed with rabid red-t-shirted students, plus a bunch of alumni, their offspring, and me in my brand new Stanford letter sweater.

Stanford beat the Washington Huskies 65-21, in an avalanche of rushing yards (read that somewhere... must get TLOML to explain it to me) and exciting running and throwing. I loved it.

Almost as much as the football, I liked the entertainment. I gather the Stanford game show  is a little unusual.

Let's start with the mascot. Washington have their husky, Berkley has its bear, Texas have their longhorns, Clemson have their tiger, and Miami have their hurricanes. The theme is usually fearsome forces of nature. And Stanford? Well, Stanford's official position is that there is no mascot. They are the Stanford Cardinal (never Cardinals) and cardinal is... well, a colour. They do however have an unofficial mascot, which is a tree.

And the band. Marching bands are another feature of US university life that I find a bit puzzling. They are part of the cheer effort, and do a jaunty, spirit-lifting half time show.

The Stanford band - or, to give them their full introduction and title, the one, the only, the truly incomparable Leland Stanford Junior, University Marching Band - are a little different. They bring a sense of irony and a spirit of chaos to the whole shebang. The show we watched had a few members of the band in Star Wars costumes, for reasons that remained obscure. They specialise in doing songs and forming letters designed to offend their opposition. Apparently they were banned from playing at Notre Dame, a college with plenty of students with Irish Catholic roots, for doing Riverdance and a gag about the potato famine.

As well as their mascot tree, the team are cheered on by the Stanford Dollies. Like all serious (since they are now serious) athletics departments, Stanford has a cheerleading team. They're the tanned girls in the skimpy outfits forming human pyramids. And those 5 rather less athletic girls twirling around and doing the can can in the corner? They are the Dollies. They come with the band.

I'll leave you with one more video treat. This is the last 4 seconds of the '82 Cal vs Stanford game where the band, thinking Stanford had won, flooded the field. Meanwhile, Cal dodged through the band to score the winning touchdown. Check out the trumpet player being thumped to the ground. Ouch! Apparently the band leadership is passed on with 4 seconds to play at the Cal vs Stanford game every year, in honour of this occasion.

Giving something back to the alma mater

TLOML and I spent this weekend at a Stanford Alumni weekend, in sunny Palo Alto, CA. For him it was a chance to reunite with his law school classmates. For me it was a proper eye opener.

I've never really got involved in Oxford's Old Member programme. I did go to a couple of Trinity College's drinks receptions for Old Members, back when I was just a few years out of college and would pretty much attend anything involving free booze. Even if the booze was warm Blossom Hill straight from the box. And last time we were in College doing Wedmin we stopped into the Old Members office to use their photocopier, and they gave us a couple of free postcards of Trinity. Oh, and a nice shy student called me once during a 'Telethon', and let me ramble on about my college days before I rang off without donating. That's about as far as Trinity's courting of me for funds has gone, and I like it that way.

I have certainly never made it to a 'Gaudy', which is the nearest equivalent to the Alumni weekend. Based on my limited experience of Trinity's alumni relations, I'd guess it involves the Domestic Bursar opening a packet of twiglets and some Freixenet while a very old Old Member gives a talk on Medieval brass rubbings. Then the College president will do a big shout out for Trinity retaining its prized mid-table position in the Norrington Table and pass a mortar board around, exhorting his audience to 'dig deep' - and a shower of coppers and Werther Originals will rain down into said mortar board.

I'm just guessing, but that's how I think it goes. Maybe when the income from the vast college estates starts to dip, and their incredible wine cellars run dry, they will get a little more aggressive in their fundraising. When they do, they could do worse than adopt the American model.

The American university system is oiled not only by massive tuition fees, but also by the generosity of very wealthy individuals. Such as the former students who will give a lot of money in order to have an auditorium or a courtyard named after them. The courting of such benefactors is an elaborate dance of spending: Stanford splash out on a fancy Alumni weekend in the hope the Alumni will reciprocate and splash out on an auditorium or two.

The Stanford Alumni weekend was pretty impressive. A number of important and learned speakers gave interesting lectures on a wide range of topics. They had golf carts to shuttle old or lazy alumni around campus.

The interweb was provided free, as were soft beverages and Stanford branded bags.

There was a big jolly picnic, with quality food, including a taqueria van and lashings of icecream. Much networking was done. Comments like 'Wow, he lost his hair pretty fast' and 'She must have gained forty pounds' peppered the air.

And, most importantly, pledges for donations were made. Apparently the Law School class of '01 contributed $110k to Stanford funds over the course of the weekend. Rather more impressive than that mortar board full of coppers.

And after all the networking was done, TLOML and his old law school buddies attacked a few of their favourite drinking holes. A drink known as the Moron Bowl was consumed. And another 7 followed. Then late night drive around Palo Alto in search of a Denny's ensued. It was as if they were still dissolute 20-something students, which I suppose is what a reunion weekend is all about.

Moron Bowl

The next day we took our 30-something hangovers for a walk around campus. Stanford is just gorgeous, and the facilities are incredible. Year round sun and palm trees help too. TLOML and I talked about sending our future offspring there. Then again, with tuition fees running at $40k, we're thinking... maybe an Oxford education will do just fine. They'll save a fortune on alumni weekends too.