M

But nobody has been more fired up about the new mag than the Twitter feed @real_kaplan. The parody feed, which is written by former Observer staffers Peter Stevenson and Jim Windolf,  has long furthered the legend of Mr. Kaplan's New York, old-school sensibility. 

Although the twitter feed is usually funny, Mr. Kaplan's recent publicity for the magazine, has given his online parody alter ego fresh material and it has been on a hot streak as it promotes M.

@real_kaplan I kept it off the Web so Buzz Feed wouldn't fuck with it. M. It's for you.

@real_kaplan Adam Moss took one look at it and plotzed. M. Available at your neighborhood five and dime.

@real_kaplan Sarkozy, not Putin. Olivier, not Branagh. Candace, not SJP. M, not O. M magazine.

@real_kaplan The lingam to @naomirwolf's yoni. M magazine. At better newsstands now.

@real_kaplan You can buy it in Dubai. But you can't buy it in Brooklyn. M magazine.

With New York Observer alum Jim Windolf at the helm and featuring contributions from George Gurley and Mark Ames, Punch! put out three issues before announcing that it was going on hiatus on August 14. 

Jim Windolf (Right) at a Rufus Wainwright Performance at Rose Bar in 2010. (photo courtesy of Patrickmcmullan.com)

Now Punch! will be focusing entirely on its new app-developing platform, described by its company CEO as a "Blogger" for app makers, while putting its editorial plans on ice for the foreseeable future.

"Somewhere down the road, it became clear we had two businesses in our hands," David Bennahum, CEO of Punch! Media, told The Observer earlier this evening.  "We had potentially a media-business producing the Punch!  products, which you know, then we had the technology business giving other companies this very powerful tool that we developed ourselves."

The initial plan was to have the custom-app division fund the editorial content. After raising $2.25 million in seed funding from venture capital funds like Betaworks and Techstars, Punch! seemed poised to publish a year's worth of issues.

But after just three editions, the magazine is on "hiatus" and its editorial team, which included Brooke Siegel (formerly of Daily Candy), is no longer with the company. 

"We had to wind it all down," said Mr. Bennahum. "We couldn't do two things at the same time."

"As we kind of look at our options, knowing we really couldn't do both, it became clear that the technology business was just a very large and exciting opportunity relative to the original business," said Mr. Bennahum. "Doing the Punch! the magazine app well requires complete focus."

With the magazine scrapped (for now), Mr. Windolf said he is no longer with Punch! 

"If he [Mr. Bennahum] restarts the magazine, I'd like to do it, which might happen," he added. (Disclosure: Daniel Edward Rosen was commissioned by Mr. Windolf in June to write a story for Punch!).

The news came as a sudden and sad twist to a publication that just months ago was poised to reinvigorate the magazine medium with new interactive content. Videos like "32 and Pregnant" and "Tiny Pundits" (featuring The National Memo Editor-in-Chief Joe Conason and three precocious and pugnacious kids) were picked up by The Daily Mail, The Atlantic Wire and Politico and lauded as spot-on spoofs.

"We did some good things, got a lot of attention for the few issues I put out as editor," said Mr. Windolf. "I was especially happy with the videos made for Punch! by young director Chioke Nassor, a huge talent and great guy."

"Also nice magazine-style pieces by Mark Ames (on Romney's Mormon history) and George Gurley (on sad-sack character actor Fred Stoller) and a good essay on viral culture before the internet by Kliph Nesteroff ([who] writes for WFMU's Beware the Blog). So it was starting to come together, I think."

Mr. Windolf has spent the past month working on Fairchild Fashion Media's revival of M Magazine, edited by former Observer editor in chief (and Windolf muse) Peter Kaplan. M will be hitting newsstands on September 24.

"It looks incredible," said Mr. Windolf. "Kaplan put a lot of his tricks in there. It's beautiful; I hope it's a hit."

Speaking from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Bennahum would not rule out a return of future issues of Punch! the magazine.

Despite rumors that Punch! had run out of money, Mr. Bennahum insisted that the company's financing is "secure."

"We don't have plans to announce another round of financing at this stage," he added.

drosen@observer.com 

Early on the morning of March 25, 1997, Page Six honcho Richard Johnson was arrested for a DUI. The item was reported by Lorne Manly (now a media writer at the New York Times) in the Off the Record column of the New York Observer.

"It got tons of reaction," said Mr. Manly yesterday of the 1997 item--but the item wasn't picked up in other venues. "I think no one else reported on the incident at the time," emailed Mr. Manly's then-editor, Jim Windolf, yesterday.

The item has not been available on the internet until now, and this prior arrest has largely been forgotten.

"It sounds pathetic, I know," Mr. Dreher said sheepishly. "But I find that I take such joy in the simple things in everyday life-going to the store, cooking food. I used to go out a lot. But I've changed. I've gotten older, I guess. I don't find the thrill in staying out at bars. I mean, I do go out, but I enjoy staying at home with my wife and reading or watching TV."

Mr. Dreher is like a lot of young married guys in New York-he shops at Pottery Barn, listens to jazz, wears a goatee, suffers a low-carb diet-except for this: He writes the most conservative column in the city. Since he made the switch from movie critic to pundit two months ago, he's unleashed his wrath against everything from the Brooklyn Museum of Art to anti-Christian violence in India to … Miss America.

"There she is, Mi-i-ss Amer-ri-caaa-the slut!" began his column in the Sept. 14 Post . "I'm kidding," he added, "but only a bit." That one went on to mourn the decline of a pageant that would allow divorced women and women who have had abortions to compete; it also scolded the New York intellectual elite for its attitude toward Middle America. "What is different is that, out there, divorce and abortion are considered evidence of failure," he wrote.

On Nov. 18, in the wake of the brick attack on Nicole Barrett, Mr. Dreher had something of a Charles Bronson moment. Depicting his own subway-station encounter with a homeless man, Mr. Dreher wrote: "And then he hesitated on the stairs, eyeing my wife and child through yellow eyes, muttering gibberish. I decided to wait there with them until the train came. It was a long five minutes as he inched down the stairs to the platform, watching us. I kept my fists balled up. All I could think was: Remember Kendra Webdale. And: I'll kill this freak before I let that happen to my family."

So what's a guy like that doing in a city like this? Growing up in St. Francisville, La., Mr. Dreher flirted with the liberal politics he now reviles. As a student at Louisiana State University, he fell in with the liberal crowd, partly because they threw the best parties and partly, he conceded, to rile his father, Ray Dreher. His liberal fling ended when a picture of him among a group of anti-Contra protesters made the front page of the local paper. His father was not pleased and threatened to cut his son off if he didn't quit the left-wing rabble-rousing. Mr. Dreher went to no more protests after that.

"I had a typical collegiate disgust for the politics of my dad," he said. "I thought I was protesting for the working class and then one day it hit me: My dad and his friends are working class, and they're voting for Reagan."

Since the recent birth of his son, he talks with his father every day. "I think about him a lot," Mr. Dreher said. "He lived by his own moral code, and he's true to that code. He had integrity. I live in the shadow of that unassailable integrity."

After graduating college in 1989, Mr. Dreher got a job at The Washington Times as a TV critic. In 1993, he converted to Catholicism, the result of reading The Seven Storey Mountain , by Thomas Merton. The TV writing got old, and Mr. Dreher returned home to try his hand at fiction. He lived in an old plantation house in the Louisiana woods and read Flannery O'Connor and Robertson Davies for inspiration, but the words would not come. So he returned to newspapering, eventually landing at the Post .

He lives in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, with his wife, Julie, and baby Matthew in a red brick building. "It's tough sometimes, when you realize you're in a significant minority within the city," he said. "But there's a sense of solidarity among us. There's a small group of conservative writers."

He keeps in mind the lessons of his father: "My dad has this sort of visceral conservatism. He believes in individual responsibility. It's interesting to come to New York and encounter this attitude in immigrants to New York."

Mr. Dreher is not so crazy about New York's intellectual elite. "I don't understand how a whole class of intellectual people go to great lengths to be sensitive to everybody except a little old Catholic lady in Carroll Gardens. Maybe it's a class thing," he offered. But he is crazy about Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. "I love the Mayor," the columnist said. "I feel like he speaks for me."

So this anti-abortion Southerner, living in Rudy's New York and working for Rupert Murdoch's paper, feels very much at ease: "I could move to a lot of other places in the South where I would feel more at home," he said. "But this is a very exciting city."

Dinner at Og's

In the year 10,000 B.C., on what is now Manhattan, a man named Og killed a large boar after much effort one morning. Blood was dripping down from the sharpened stone tip of his spear and gushing from the boar's neck.

Just then, there was a stirring in the bushes and through the vegetation came a man known as Ak. He looked upon Og with an expression that said, "Whoa, nice boar." Then his expression softened, as if to say, "I've had no hunting luck today."

Og approached Ak and-to use a translation that keeps the flavor of their language-he said: "Ak! Come me cave! Eat boar! Bring mate!" Og smiled in an attempt to seal the invitation.

But the look on Ak's face was downcast. He said: "No!"

Og moved even closer to Ak, petted his hairy shoulders and said: "Ak help drag boar, Ak eat boar with Og!"

And so the two Manhattanites of 12 millennia ago dragged the heavy beast, leaving a blood swath all the way back to Og's cave, located at what is now Park Avenue and 32nd Street.

Og's mate, Lop, had prepared the pit with fire stones. The men shoved the boar into the pit. The small hairs on its side, not really noticeable until now, curled away in the intense heat.

Ak kicked at the ground. Og petted his hairy back: "Ak bring mate!" said Og. "Eat boar!"

Ak walked the equivalent of about 20 blocks to his own cave. His head was swirling: Eat at cave of another? No! Go back on hunt! But sun was high, animals hiding. So it was boar at Og's or no meal at all! How would he tell his mate, Eeg?

Back at his cave-at what is now West 46th Street-Ak faced Eeg.

"Ak no hunt?" she said.

"Eat boar tonight!" said Ak, ducking the question.

"Eeg like boar," said Eeg. "Where boar?"

"Boar at Og cave."

Eeg looked angry. "Get boar! Og thief!"

"No! No!" said Ak. "Og no steal! Og kill boar!"

"Og kill boar?" said Eeg. "Og eat boar!"

"No," said Ak. "Og, Lop, Eeg, Ak eat boar! All eat boar!"

"At Og cave?" said Eeg, screwing up her mouth. "Sound nice!"

Eeg spent the afternoon threading flower petals onto her body hairs and rolling in scent. Ak went down to the river to hunt for fish, but caught nothing. He came upon a mastodon on his way back, but wouldn't you know it, he had the wrong spear.

Darkness fell. Ak and Eeg, feeling jittery, made the walk over to Og and Lop's cave. The boar was cooked. Lop laid fatty hunks upon special flat stones. With flowery branches lining the walls and wood carvings placed here and there, this cave was really something. Ak could see that Eeg was taking in every detail.

She made small talk with Lop (who had large breasts, Ak noticed) and even with Og himself. "Big boar!" she said-and when she said this to Og, Ak felt as if he had been cut with a sharp-edged stone.

When Og and Lop were absent from the eating area, Eeg looked at Ak with an imploring expression that said: "Don't be silent! Say something!" So a bit later, Ak mumbled, "Meat. Tasty." Og patted Ak and smiled. "Friend!" said Og. This Og-how did he always know the proper way to behave and the right thing to say?

After the meal, on their way home, Eeg said she liked Og and Lop's cave very much-but wasn't it a bit far from the river? They got no breeze! Sure, the flowery branches were a nice touch-but Eeg said she planned to find some seashells for their own cave, once things got a little less crazy. Eeg also mentioned that Ak had better kill something big. They owed Og and Lop-owed them a feast! Something better than lousy old boar!

As sleep approached Ak on the straw mat, these thoughts struck him: At Og's cave, everyone seemed to be having a nice time. The boar was tasty. The talk was gentle. There was laughter. So why did he now feel so stormy inside, so upset? And why was Eeg lying at the edge of the mat, with her back to him?

-Jim Windolf

Fake food used to be glamorous and difficult. It had an otherworldly neon cast to it: Kool-Aid and Cheetos and Sno Cones. Sweet 'n' Low, it was believed, gave you cancer. Tater Tots made you lumpy and sluggish.

But the years passed and something happened. Fake food has become good for you, aggressively so. It makes you strong and clean: Gatorade and Gardenburgers, Tasti-D-Lite and Power Bars.

You tend not to overdose on this stuff because it comes in stern little serving sizes with the copious nutrients and fortifications spelled out on the label. Somehow it melds the space-age astronaut appeal of Tang (which your fourth-grade friend's mom, sipping distractedly at her Tab, gave you at breakfast instead of orange juice) with the virtuous aspect of, say, tempeh. Tempeh is too loose, too unwieldy for the new millennium. This food is tight. Notice how Power Bars, those sleekly engineered, expensive swaths of perfect nutrition, have totally usurped Tiger's Milk bars with their dorky hippie carob overtones.

Sometimes the fake food people go too far–witness the Olestra debacle–but most of the time, they're right on the mark.

When Mary Carillo was doing TV commentary for the U.S. Open, she remarked several times on the "energy paste" Martina Hingis was squeezing into her mouth during changeovers. Ms. Hingis went on to lose, but that's not the point. The point is, the gals used to gnaw bananas and bagels during changeovers. But who has time for produce anymore? Produce rots. Bagels get stale. Real food, increasingly, just doesn't make sense.

From Power Bar headquarters in Berkeley, Calif., company spokesman Debbie Pfeifer described a new tangerine-flavored, caffeine-enhanced gel similar to the one absorbed by Ms. Hingis. She said it was fortified with antioxidant vitamins C and E. "We have a few temps downstairs that I've seen just have it as a morning pick-me-up," said Ms. Pfeifer. "People love it. It's a carbohydrate gel, it's designed to get energy quickly into your system. You know, you often don't have the time to chew."

Ms. Pfeifer is right. Chewing is for suckers.

–Alexandra Jacobs

The Gentile Giant

It's odd, but I do not recall anyone in the family remarking on cousin Winthrop's large size until he was well into his 20's, when, at his sister Mizzen's wedding on Saranac Lake, he stood up abruptly and knocked a light fixture loose with his head. I'd guess he stood about 8 feet 6 inches tall then, two inches short of his eventual apogee. If the light fixture had not fallen and resulted in the ghastly accident that brought a quick end to the DeWitts' plans for progeny–plans which the unlucky couple had in fact just been discussing in animated tones with Bunny Emmet–I do believe Winthrop would have passed through this mortal coil in a happy state, his colossal dimensions no more remarked upon than his blond hair, deadly backhand or whinnying, infectious laugh.

The only previous remark made toward the fellow's bulk was a quarter-century earlier. I remember a soft summer afternoon at the Meadow Club. Winthrop was still in short pants, he must have been about 3, and, in pursuit of a glistening pitcher of lemonade, the tyke simply walked over the tennis net in one step, occasioning a rare double-fault on the part of Uncle Arven and a curt, muttered observation–"The boy is large"–from his opponent.

But as Winthrop lumbered his way through adolescence and young adulthood, his head leaving cantaloupe-size indents in door frames, his feet sprouting through white bucks the size of Volkswagens, his shoulders splitting the seams of countless blazers from Brooks Brothers, no word was ever said aloud about his Herculean proportions. The carpenter was discreetly phoned; Brooks simply sent another blazer, a special "quadruple-breasted" number the Corsican tailor made on the sly. No one spoke a word, not even when Winthrop, his legs being too large to fit under the desk, ended up standing, a bit stooped, at the rear of the classroom from grades two through 12. (Looking back, I suppose his choice of college–a rather impulsive and much-bemoaned decision to attend the University of Hawaii over Yale–may have been influenced by the relative abundance of headroom on those wild, untamed Polynesian atolls.) Upon graduation, Winthrop entered the family firm in New York, and, fortunately for my dear cousin, there was no shortage of big, horsy girls from Princeton when he needed a date for a black-tie function or a weekend at Newport. There was one such girl, her name was Charlotte, who actually towered over Winthrop in her stocking feet.

After the incident at Saranac, Winthrop was never the same. The days when he could sit back and sip a Southside at the Southampton Bathing Corporation, his thoughts unmolested by any notion of being vertically other, were gone. When asked to escort my sister to a benefit, he moaned about the "yards of sailcloth" which would be required for his shirt alone. (Eventually, he gave up and turned his wardrobe over to thick, horizontal stripes.) When taking the train to the country, he refused to enter the compartment, where he might chance upon another passenger, but rather lay splayed like an iguana across the top of the train, his knuckles white with the effort it took to hold on. I will not say he became obsessed with his height, but I realized something was amiss when he started insisting on kneeling down in family photographs, which of course only made him stand out more: Now that his head was in the photographs, it became apparent that his tousled brain case was approximately the size of a small dirigible. Before long, he began the descent you have read about in the less respectable papers.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't think of Winthrop, though I rarely speak of him. Last night, as I was putting out the light, I turned to my beloved and said, "Charlotte, did you ever think my cousin Winthrop was, well, a bit large?"

"Don't be ridiculous," was all that she said.

–Peter Stevenson

Tanya Rising

Goodbye, Bulgaria. Hello, New York.

Tanya Petrova, 24, has dumped her boy-friend and moved to the big town. She has an apartment in Queens and a job waiting tables at Mehanata 416 B.C., a Bulgarian bar and restaurant at 416 Broadway.

Before her shift, she sits in a booth and eats her daily meal: fried eggs, sour cream cucumber salad and a fried mushroom. At work she wears embroidered peasant outfits and elbow-long pigtails that she ties with red ribbons.

The ex-boyfriend was not so nice. Tanya met him back in Bulgaria when she was 19. Shortly after they met, he moved to Boston to study finance. After five years of long-distance letters and phone calls, he asked her to come live with him, and she made the trip.

"All the time, I clean, cooking, washing all day. He was very jealous. We go to disco–to parties–and I'd have a problem. He told me bad things. He hurt me. All the times he told me that I'm bad girl, I'm prostitute, I'm going to sleep with his friends. Yeah! 'You are a prostitute, you are a bad girl, you are awful,' and after that he told me, 'I love you, stay with me,' and so I decide to move here. I dump him and I came here."

Tanya got up to bring the check to a couple on the verge of copulating at a nearby table.

"They are from Macedonia," she said. "They come here and kiss a lot. They're very nice."

Now Tanya has a new boyfriend. He took her to Six Flags Great Adventure and Niagara Falls. But there's a slight problem: The new boyfriend has a girlfriend.

"I am just waiting," said Tanya, "because he say that someday he will break up with her and he will be with me. But I don't believe in this. I am a real person. I know. It doesn't matter. I know."

–Lauren Mechling

American Buffalo

It's amazing that a movie as good as American Beauty can be so derivative. Let us count the ways. (1) Dead narrator– Sunset Boulevard . (2) "Psycho" boy lives next door– Toy Story . (3) Romance between dreamy girl and boy who just got out of mental institution– Ordinary People . (4) Abusive military dad– The Great Santini . (5) Women undress or make intimate confessions before a video camera– Sex, Lies and Videotape . (6) Life gets dark in a nice suburb, but main characters find beauty in everyday things– Blue Velvet .

–Jim Windolf

There are still a few people in the city who refuse to wear anything but black, and at sunset on Friday, May 21, they all seemed to be gathered between the very white walls of the Visionaire Gallery on Mercer Street. They were there to look at three–three!–elaborate black-and-white costumes made by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren, two 29-year-old designing Dutchmen who are known as Viktor & Rolf.

Mounted on pedestals above the crowd was a black pleated pantsuit with white frills pouring from the bodice; a bridal-themed, ruffly-veiled outfit with black from throat to floor; and something involving a complicated pinafore.

"We have nothing against colors," said Viktor–or was it Rolf?–who had wire-rimmed glasses, pink cheeks, and full pink lips with little droplets of sweat above them. The men had changed from T-shirts and jeans into black suits, black shirts and black square-toe shoes. "But we do find it, uh, difficult to work with colors because they have such a lot of meaning . For us, everything we do has to have a necessity, and often there is nothing of a necessity in color."

Rolf (Viktor?) was standing close at hand, heels clicked together. He had a 6 o'clock shadow and square black-rimmed glasses. He looked like a Sprocket.

"No, people don't wear it out," Rolf said, waving at one of his elaborately poufy designs. "No, not on the street. It's, like, couture!"

"I guess the people that buy it, or wear it, don't go on the street much," said Viktor.

Rolf: "They only go from taxi to taxi!"

Viktor: "Or limo to limo!"

The men have been creative partners since they met at the Academy of Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands, in 1992. In their tenure together, they have built a reputation as pranksters. Viktor & Rolf have stuffed garments with balloons and confetti and they have sold expensive perfume bottles filled with water. Madonna likes them. A $50 book containing photographs of the duo's oeuvre was for sale at the entrance, but no one was paying it any mind.

How were they finding New York?

The men pronounced it fantastic–this was their third visit–but for one thing. "The noise," they said in unison, as a heavy disco beat thumped behind them.

"There is energy, but there is also a negative side," said Viktor. "So many people, a lot of traffic … Amsterdam is a totally relaxed city."

"Totally relaxed!" chimed in Rolf.

"You know, Amsterdam is like a village ," said Viktor. "This is a real city!"

Er–what's Dutch food like?

"A lot of potatoes," chuckled Rolf.

"Traditional Dutch food isn't very good; it's like farmer's food," said Viktor. "I think the food is the same as with fashion and maybe also art. We're a very Puritanical country, at least the North, so enjoying yourself has for a long time had a stigma of guilt, so probably that creates a context where it is, uh, almost forbidden to enjoy the pleasures in life …"

So what do they do to relax?

"I try to switch off and watch TV," said Viktor.

Dutch TV?

"Well, we have cable … But we work a lot. Our work is very important. Also, this is very personal. It's really our way of translating our emotions, and for a long time it has been a way to command our own demons."

What demons?

"Frustration!" said Rolf.

"The things that bother really everyone," said Viktor. "False hopes. And then you grow up. But anyway, uh, I try to switch off and relax … We also do sport."

"We do steps," said Rolf.

Steps? As in, step aerobics?

"It's so uncool," conceded Rolf.

What gets them excited?

"Excitable? Excitable as in … gets mad?" said Viktor.

Rolf: "We're both not really …"

Viktor: "No, I mean, we are, but we don't show it."

Rolf: "Only sometimes, and then we are loud."

Viktor: "We get completely upset."

Their faces were completely impassive.

How would they feel if people laughed at their clothes?

There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

"It's up to them," said Rolf. "But we're serious. We mean it."

–Alexandra Jacobs

The Outlaw Gourmands

"We'll cover food, drinking and dining for the Wallpaper set–young restaurantgoers who don't know how to pronounce Ruth Reichl's name, let alone who she is."

–journalist Steve Garbarino, to the New York Post 's Page Six, on a magazine he might start

We were young and wild, and we liked fine dining. Some days it was tender strips of char-grilled octopus served on a bed of frisée lettuce; other days it was pan-roasted monkfish. We couldn't get enough.

Misty was my little prize. She was 19. I met her at the Manhattan Correctional Center, where she was doing time. I was smuggling dope to a lady friend when I spotted Misty the next seat over, behind the greasy glass. Now she was free … and always up for a scrumptious meal.

We cleaned ourselves up–yeah, Misty and I could clean up real good when we had to–and we went to Casimir, this new place on Avenue B that looked kind of cute. The waiter set down some arugula with roast garlic croutons and parmesan slices. Misty dove right in.

"Baby like the salad?" I said.

"Oooh, Baby like," she said, folding a purple leaf into her mouth.

As I was biting into a crisp baguette slathered with fresh country butter, I saw one of Misty's running buddies in the corner–a cheap punk named Zlotnick. He wore a heavy cloth overcoat. His face was swollen and pale. "Nice to see you both," he said. "Mind if I …?" He pulled back a chair, leaving us with no choice but to have him join us. Zlotnick produced some crumpled bills, only to mention that they were "traceable"–so we would have to spot him lunch.

Soon, the main course arrived: pig's feet on mashed potatoes with celery root for Zlotnick ("Mmmmmm," he said, sucking up a mound); salmon tartare with beet sauce for me; and the bouillabaisse for Misty. We grunted and moaned and belched. It was too tasty for table manners.

Misty and I couldn't shake Zlotnick that afternoon. He got ice cream with us in the park … hung around when we looked at bathroom fixtures at this store uptown … and he was still with us when we helped a guy do a stick-up job at a warehouse in Brooklyn.

That night, at Markt, a new Belgian place on West 14th Street, Zlotnick was practically merging with the Flemish rabbit in beer sauce, and Misty was looking very slinky as she downed a bowl of split-pea soup with trout. "Niiiiiice," she said. I made some big slurping noises over my gray shrimp coquettes, and this got everybody laughing. Yeah, we were having a decent time. But after the chocolate cake and a funny little dessert wine, Zlotnick and I had words over the check.

Outside, I had to punch him in the face. The punch knocked him out. Then I took his cash. Traceable, my eye.

Back at our place, Misty and I felt queasy. We made love like crazy and we didn't wake up until the next evening, with the horns honking on the street and the sun going down and all that shit.

We cleaned up until we smelled decent and we went up to midtown. A guy in an office building hadn't paid a debt, so I had to flush his face. Afterward, Misty and I ended up at this funky little place called Heartbeat on East 49th. She was ecstatic over the roast quail on a bed of dates and mushrooms and I definitely enjoyed my rack of lamb with kumquat chutney (although I was wishing I'd ordered the mackerel ceviche when I saw a guy eating it two tables away). Misty and I licked our plates clean and then we ran like hell, away from the maître d' and into the street.

Funnily enough, later on at some dive bar, we ran into this couple who'd skipped a check at Verbena on Fourth Avenue that same evening. Nice couple. Anyway, they said if we thought the quail at Heartbeat was tasty, we really had to check out Verbena. Apparently, the chef there does something with game birds that makes your knees knock together. Or so this couple was saying. Anyway, I guess Misty and I will just have to check it out for ourselves.

–Jim Windolf