I know what you are thinking..."What the hell does a goy that grew up in the south know from egg creams?"

I can remember a film during the Kukla Fran and Ollie Show when I was a kid. It was about two immigrant Jewish boys in Brooklyn. The fat one was obsessed with egg creams. One day, all the kids on the block collected money to see how many egg creams this little boy could drink in one afternoon at the drug store in their neighborhood. I can still remember the close ups of the fat kid's face as he was downing the last few egg creams...visibly getting sicker and sicker. He was obviously about to hurl egg cream all the way down his block in Depression era Brooklyn.

From then on, I was curious about egg creams. What was an Egg Cream? I forgot about them until a few years later, when Barbra Streisand went for egg creams with her rich boyfriend in a scene from Funny Girl. I really had to know then. If Barbra liked Fanny Brice enough to play her in a movie, I liked her too. And...if Fanny Brice liked egg creams, I liked them too.

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The first few times I finally got to New York, all my friends wanted to do was to hit the clubs like CBGB, Max's, and The Mudd Club that we were reading about in music magazines. I loved doing that too, but I also wanted to score an egg cream to see what the fuss was all about.

The first thing that I learned was...there are no eggs and no cream in an egg cream. hmmm

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I still always make it a point to have one in a different place every time I go up now. Last August, we went to Sammy's Steak House on the Lower East Side, where they let you make your own. They brought the U Bet Syrup, a carton of whole milk, and a seltzer bottle to the table. They made the first one for us clueless gentiles at the table...and then they left all the stuff and let us make as many as we wanted.

(The garlic smeared skirt steaks at Sammy's are to freakin' DIE for. They are huge. They are about 2 inches longer than the plate on both sides. The crowd at Sammy's is a wild mix of old Russians and Jews, families coming back into the old neighborhood for the night, kids from NYU, etc etc. They make the MOST INCREDIBLE chopped liver right at your table. There is a guy playing a Hammond organ and singing cheeeeeeesy songs ala "Tony Orlando minus Dawn" for entertainment. When you sit down, they don't even ask what you want to drink...they immediately bring chilled Russian vodka to the table with the water. There is even a jar of schmaltz at every table.)

A night at Sammy's Steakhouse is a trip! It's not on any tourist maps. You would pass by the basement entrance and never notice it. Once you get in, you feel like you have been transported back to a friendly slice of the old neighborhood that hasn't changed for 60 years. We hung out for hours and had a BLAST!

The matchbook that I saved gives the pertinent info:

Famous Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse
157 Chrystie Street
NYC 10002

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What was I talking about?....oh yeah....Egg Creams....

You know how random and OCD my grocery shopping is, right? I'm sure I was supposed to be in Krogers for bread or garbage bags or toilet paper or some nonsense like that, but instead I bought a bottle of Fox's U Bet and some seltzer water Friday night and have been practicing the art of the egg cream.



The chocolate syrup HAS to be Fox's U Bet for an authentic Egg Cream.



You don't have to, but I stir the milk and the U Bet a little before I pour in the seltzer.

Pour the seltzer water down a long spoon or along the side of the glass so you dont get too much foam too early. Then stir vigorously around the bottom until you get a foam head that rises just to the top of the glass.

The ideal Egg Cream has a dark brown bottom, light chocolate middle, and about an inch and a half of beautiful white foam.

The fellow in the next photo has just achieved the perfect egg cream. No wonder he looks so deleriously happy. Just look at that egg cream!



T

I was in mon automobile ce soir, and I was thinking about what song I might post for the Saturday Night Blog Crawl. Serge Gainsbourg popped into mon mind.



I started thinking..."Is it actually possible that I haven't blogged him yet?" I can't believe that I haven't talked about Serge and Jane already. I LOVE Serge Gainsbourg. If Keith Richards and Leonard Cohen and Maurice Chevalier had a three-way and through some crazy cosmic quantum physics kind of wrinkle produced a love child, it would be Serge Gainsbourg.

He was off the wall and poetic and strange and undefineable and tres tres French. Even if you don't know his bio, you can pick up some notions about him while listening to his catalog of music. When I listen to his songs, I envision a man that...when he wasn't sleeping, was appreciating ALOT of great French food, drinking ALOT, having sex ALOT...but most of all "brooding".

If I'm not mistaken, that's what the French do in excess...have sex, eat, have sex, drink, have sex,....but mostly brood. DAMMIT...WHY COULDN'T I HAVE BEEN BORN IN FRANCE????

The song you are hearing..."Je T'aime Moi Non Plus"... is the most famous and infamous tune that Serge and his girlfriend Jane Birkin recorded together. After it was released in 1969, it was immediately banned in most European countries and the US. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Jane is undeniably totally climaxing during the song.





Jane was infinitely more photogenic than poor Serge.



Damn the French. That's the problem with them. They are just too damn French and too damn sexy and liberated.



I mean really...how dare they, as a culture...love unconditionally, appreciate inner and outer beauty, raise beautiful families, and think with their right and left brains equally? Damn French.

I know this post is going to totally embarass her...but I had to do it.

There's a southern lady here on Blogstream that simply must be published. I read her musings every day and I am always amazed...even when she posts silly benign stuff.

When she really lets go and writes from the heart, there is always an underlying and tactful and beautiful literary flow that has blown me away for many months now. She has the same singular command for the language to relate the true heart and soul and humor and pathos and poetry of the southern and global experience as did Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Harper Lee, Tennessse Williams, and Truman Capote.



Belle is honest and exposed and spiritual and intelligent and insightful and funny and sad. She shares and treats us to this beautiful and whole human that she is via a beautiful literary roller coaster ride just like Carson McCullers did. She has that command of self awareness and that "one/two" punch of vulnerability and worldly slyness that distinguishes great southern authors.

Here's my message and challenge to Angel Belle....

You need to get down off your high horse and get yourself published within the next year. Don't make me come down I20 and kick your butt til you do.

Love, Tommy.

It's all about orange.


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Just cruising around looking for inspiration for the Spring color story for the store. I'm still diggin' ORANGE and aqua and smooth blues and bleached whites and naturals.

The images are from decor8...the most amazing trend-spotter blog.

http://www.decor8.blogspot.com/

T

You know...you are driving home. You stop at the convenience store for a pack of smokes. Out of the corner of your eye, you spy a packaged snack product. You do a double take. You think to yourself...hmmm...could this really be the same Funyun snacks that I coveted as a child? It is...or they are...or you know. Anyways.

You buy a bag. After all..they are heralded in this convenience store as one of the snack items that can be obtained for 2 for $1. You feel that you have triumphed over the convenience store mandate for purchasing multiple items at a single given dollar amount.

You just bought not the two items that added up to a dollar if purchased together, but you just bought one single item and you still only paid 50 cents for it.

You rock! You beat the system! You rose above the evil marketing machine and found a loophole. You were supposed to purchase two bags of Funyuns to get "THE DEAL", but you only purchased one and you still got it for 50 cents. Rock on, wise consumer!

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That's how they get you. I thought..."hey...it's just one bag of Funyuns...I can quit whenever I want"

But then I found myself buying a bag of Funyuns every time I passed the store on my way home from work. But after a while, that wasn't enough.

I would eat the whole bag in the car before I got home. I would sit at my desk wishing that I had saved at least one or two.

My solution was to buy 2 bags at the convenience store on the way home from work....one to eat in the car and one to snack on in the comfort of my home.

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After a few days...even that wasn't enough. If I got stopped by more than one red light...the first bag was gone. I sat at the second red light and stuffed the empty bag into the console...and than stared at the second bag laying seductively on the passenger seat.

That night...I was spiralling out of control. I got home and had eaten the second bag in the car. I spent a restless, sleepless night cursing life without Funyuns. Oh I know that I could have just driven back to the store, but they were probably already closed and besides, I had already taken off my pants.

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Thank God they haven't brought back Screaming Yellow Zonkers and Pizza Spins. I was powerless against them both. I have a theory that the government was experimenting with some kind of Vietnam shit and was manipulating snack foods in the early 70s to make them irresistable enough to kill for. I love a good conspiracy theory, so let's just assume that was going on, k?



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I tried to Google images for Pizza Spins, but none exist. Ah HAH! The government has completely erased any evidence of Pizza Spins.

My mom brought home a box of this new fangled snack product called Pizza Spins in 1972. I gradually ate the entire box over the course of the night. The box of Pizza Spins taunted me all night from the coffee table as I was watching the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I got up in the middle of the night and ravaged until I had reached the bottom.

I spent the rest of the night throwing up Pizza Spins.

The next Thursday was our class party for being something extraordinary...maybe my 5th grade class had perfect attendance all year...maybe we had sold the most Krispy Kreme donuts that year...maybe we had exposed the most teachers with Communist tendencies...I forget the exact details and the reason for the party.

Anyway...they were serving Coca Cola and Pizza Spins. I think it was the first time I uttered the words "oh hell no".



T