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by Liz Smith Do a Good Deed In This Naughty World ... The Grand Days of New York City Eateries, Then and Now ... Best Kanye/Kim Headline Ever! "KANYE, stay in shape. The last guy only lasted 72 days. Last longer than a Hollywood marriage. Join Today. New York Sports Clubs." For my money, this one in The New York Post is the funniest most pertinent advertisement of the entertainment year! |
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I WANT TO START off by asking my readers, who generally have their own pet charities, and don't have the extra dough to cover everything, to think about sending just a small amount to a good cause that is not asking you to buy A TICKET.
This is what the wonderful David Patrick Columbia is asking — send a little money to "On Their Plate," City Harvest, 6 East 32nd Street, 5th floor, NYC 10016. And he is the guy who started with Jeff Hirsch putting out the New York Social Diary every day for free with no money and no help and they have built it into this, the most civilized site on the Internet. His co-chairs will thank you too. They are Carol Atkinson, Joy Ingham, Topsy Taylor. And you know how nice they are! IF YOU SEND $500 OR MORE, YOU'LL BE NOTICED ON THE EVENTS PAGE. (I'LL SAY!) |
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| WE HEAR from our readers. Comes Danny Sugar: He says: "I am a chain-reader. I adore books. Books are my drug. I am addicted. I will probably end up in the Betty Ford Literary Wing. So I would pay for the opposite of the Evelyn Wood speed reading course. I would pay someone to teach me to read more slowly so I could enjoy the books I love ... longer. Reading a 771 page novel (Re: Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch") in one night is like swallowing an entire filet mignon in one gulp without chewing. You've consumed it somehow but you haven't enjoyed it!" |
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| OH, I don't know. The individual who discussed that book with me recently seems to be enjoying everything, even though he beats me to pieces. It took me two weeks to read that astounding novel. Now I am going back to read Donna Tartt's others — "The Little Friend" and "The Secret History.” I don't care how long it takes me. |
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| When I ran into the author by chance recently in the classic Veau d'Or where you can talk and hear yourself think, my date said to the writer, "Oh, we live in the same building. I last saw you in the laundry room.” Donna said she was off to Finland and Europe to promote “The Gold Finch” and she introduced the nice looking guy she was with as "Wes Anderson." So ... another big celebrity sighting in Cathy Treboux's 79-year-old French bistro, for Mr. Anderson directed the movie I loved most this year, "The Grand Budapest Hotel." |
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| HERE'S Jim MITCHELL who once supervised whether Onassis or LBJ got the first booth in El Morocco! He is recalling the good old days and stirs a lot of memories: "In NYC in 1960 the place to be on Sunday nights for dinner was Luchow's on 14th Street, owned by Jan Mitchell and serving German food that Germans never saw anymore. It was packed with celebrities, politicians, socialites and millionaires when those words meant something. |
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Everyone ordered lemon chicken and nobody has bothered to make it correctly ever since. Then if you went to Chinatown you looked up the Canton in order to be in the same room as the genius I.M. Pei. Come to think of it, that was always on a Friday night. Meantime, Elaine's started flourishing and writers congregated alternating with show business. |
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And for my dough there is also a swell crowd of friends and enemies and those who are not yet decided at Sette Mezzo on Lex and 70th. And, of course there are all the hot new cafes that open and close quickly where the noise level is what they really offer and the New York Observer observes correctly that the City is selling out parks and public places and filling them with mediocre over-priced eating joints. |
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| MAYBE you who don't live in the Northeast wonder why the rest of the U.S. and the world should be interested when Jim Mitchell and I note nostalgically and magically where famous people go in NYC. I just remember eating all that up at age 9 and on and on, reading Walter Winchell's column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and promising myself someday I'd join the names. |
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Contact Liz Smith here. | Click here for NYSD contents. |