Aamanns/Copenhagen

As the days darken and the wind whipping off the Hudson turns icy, New Yorkers may find themselves thinking of those darker, colder cities to the north: Stockholm, Reykjavik, Helsinki, Copenhagen. Every winter, a handful of New Yorkers are afflicted by something of a Scandinavian crush. The residents of  distant Nordic regions seem to endure the long winters with such cool elegance, strutting through their snowy streets rather than staying housebound, hovering by the heater.

Aamanns/Copenhagen, a new Danish restaurant specializing in smørrebrød at 13 Laight Street in Tribeca, couldn't have timed its opening any better. The first snowfall of the season dusted the city last night, and Aamanns will start dishing out its signature dish—topping-strewn slices of dark rye bread— this evening at 5:30 p.m.

"We are so excited, we are running around like crazy," exclaimed owner Sanne Ytting when The Observer spoke with her earlier this afternoon. The eatery's opening had been scheduled for last week, but Hurricane Sandy delayed things. (Hurricanes, unlike the cold, being a foreign phenomenon for both the Danish and Tribeca).

Was Ms. Ytting worried at all about opening to Tribeca's quieter-than-normal cobblestone streets?

"I don’t have any concerns at all. We took the paper off the windows yesterday, and people are knocking on the door and asking to get in," Ms. Ytting said. "The Danish community has been waiting for it."

The restaurant, which claims to be the only one in the city serving authentically Danish food, sees itself as an outpost for the city's expatriate community (it already has a successful location in Denmark). Besides dishing out the national specialty, which one might call a small, open-face sandwich if one is too intimidated to attempt a pronunciation of smørrebrød (we are told that the ø is pronounced like the "i" in bird "placed at the front of the mouth"), it plans to hold cultural events. A party is scheduled next month for Danish artist Peter Max-Jakobsen and there will also be Danish holiday festivities.

But the restaurant hopes to draw a much larger clientele than those who can pronounce smørrebrød correctly; it would like to see the same popularity as Nordic stars of the dining scene Acme and Aquavit.

"I think that the whole wave of Scandinavian food that’s taking over right now is a big help for us, but I feel that what we have to offer, even if it was six years ago, people would check it out," said Ms. Ytting. "New York is very curious in their adventures."

The 50-seat restaurant isn't quite as upscale as those restaurants—prices average around $9 a smørrebrød, which are topped with a blend of Danish meats and cheeses—herring, chicken salad, pork breast, beef tartar, sugar-salted salmon—pickles, horseradish and seasonal vegetables selected by chef Adam Aamann.

Did Danes congregate anywhere else in New York?

"Other than the Brooklyn Danish Church, Ms. Ytting couldn't think of another New York destination. Although she did admit that you might find her at Acme.

"That is an amazing, amazing place," she gushed.

kvelsey@observer.com

There are two motors behind the emerging climate policy. The first is the actual danger posed by global warming. The second is the rising cost and uncertain supply of fossil fuels. The transition to a renewable energy base is not a luxury item; it is essential to our economic well being. The side effect of a renewable energy base is a reduction of greenhouse gasses. Regulation of carbon dioxide will stimulate and hasten the transition to a green energy economy. It will also promote more efficient use of all forms of energy, even fossil fuels.

In his November 17th column in the New York Times, David Leonhardt discussed "cash for caulkers", a proposed stimulus program to promote weatherization in private homes.  Leonhardt concluded that while

"... cash for caulkers would be trickier than cash for clunkers ... [it] would have the potential to do far more good. McKinsey, the consulting firm, estimates that households could reduce their energy use by 28 percent over the next decade. In terms of greenhouse gases, that would be the equivalent of taking half of all vehicles in this country off the road...Done right, cash for caulkers would be precisely the kind of stimulus that makes the most sense: spending money now to save money later." 

It makes good economic sense to use less energy to get the same benefit. This is true in appliances, homes, autos and every place else we use energy. However, the argument is often made that fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables and so the move away from fossil fuels will increase costs and reduce economic well being.  However, as I and many others have frequently observed, the era of cheap, easily accessible and abundant fossil fuels will not last forever. The price spikes and political battles over drilling are warning signals of the uncertain future of fossil fuels.  Eventually, capital will move away from uncertainty and the risks of fossil fuels toward energy sources that are more susceptible to cost reduction through application of new technology. While today renewables are far riskier than fossil fuels, this is not a trend that will last forever.

In the globally interconnected economic competition we all work within, the future will belong to those nations that learn to deliver energy with the least economic and environmental cost.  This competition requires companies to look to cut costs on materials, labor, production processes, waste management, transportation and energy.  These trends will continue with or without a climate treaty.

But the climate treaty and a climate law in the U.S. will provide a strong signal to the public and to business leaders that governments will push the move to a green energy economy. In the case of the Obama Administration, the failure to produce such change endangers the fragile political coalition that brought it to office. The Copenhagen conference should be seen as a giant two-week long media event pushing climate policy. It will be the climate change Olympics. President Obama and his fellow world leaders will not be able to drive this issue off of the agenda no matter how hard they try to reduce expectations.

Moreover, it is in President Obama's political interest to ride this media wave and encourage it to build. The predictable aftermath of Copenhagen will be a rise in understanding of the climate problem and support for change policy at the national and international level.  As the mid-term elections approach and the Democrats continue to sink in the polls, they will need tangible results, or at a minimum a well fought loss, to energize the first time voters that made the difference in 2008.  During his presidential candidacy, Obama made hope a principle, and when questioned about the feasibility of fundamental political change, responded "yes we can." Many of us continue to hope that we can and we will.

I have argued that the Democrats need three successes to have any chance of maintaining control of Congress in 2010: 1. Economic revival; 2.Health care reform, and; 3. Climate change and energy policy. However, in addition to making progress in all of those areas, they need to link the three together in a convincing message that the change we were promised is well underway. If the main message out of Copenhagen is that the United States temporized and retreated, the Democrats will have deep problems motivating 2008's first time voters to the polls. In that election Obama was the choice of 69% of first time voters. At a minimum, the President needs to go to Copenhagen and clearly articulate his own policies on climate change. In my view, going to Copenhagen is less risky for him than staying away.

"Those of you who have followed this story closely might know I was sent on vacation by my bosses," said Flemming Rose, the culture editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. Mr. Rose was the editor who commissioned that paper's infamous cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

Mr. Rose's American vacation hasn't been particularly relaxing. Hoping to create "some other point of reference to me for the readers, so I would not be Mr. Cartoon for the rest of my career," his editors have sent him on a sojourn across the U.S. to speak with public figures and intellectuals about the global political landscape. Mr. Rose has already conducted interviews with Newt Gingrich, Christopher Hitchens, Francis Fukuyama, and Richard Perle.

On Monday, April 17, in order to speak with author and intellectual Paul Berman, Mr. Rose found himself in a stuffy classroom on Washington Place—before Mr. Berman's class at New York University's journalism school.

Mr. Rose, 48, who has closely clipped graying hair and fashionable, black wire-framed glasses, first conducted a taped interview with Prof. Berman—he began with the manageable, "How would you characterize your world view?" and followed up with the equally bite-sized, "What does it mean to you to be liberal?" Then, tape recorder off, he spoke about the cartoons for just under two hours, fielding questions from the class.

Mr. Rose was resolutely unapologetic about their publication. "The cartoons were not stereotyping, they were not demonizing," he said. "Journalism is about putting your finger on the issue that causes debate. All the things we're debating in Western Europe and Denmark," he said, meaning immigration, assimilation, the place of Islam in liberal democracies and social welfare states, "converged in the cartoons. As a journalist, that's what you dream of."

The cartoons were published because "There was a story we had to cover" Rose said. "I was provoked by the idea that some in Denmark and Western Europe were submitting themselves to self-censorship when dealing with Islam." The children's book writer who could not find an illustrator to draw the Prophet was just one example of this tendency, according to Mr. Rose. Other incidents—the unbidden removal of two art exhibits related to the Koran in England and Germany, a Danish comedian saying he feared being offensive to Muslims, and a meeting between the Danish prime minister and Imams who asked for better coverage of Islam in the press—motivated Jyllands-Posten to run the images.

"I will say a cartoon is not worth a single human life, but the cartoons were not the direct cause of this, there were lots of factors" he said. Mr. Rose believes that the protests, which began months after his newspaper had initially published the cartoons, and even months after they had been reprinted in an Egyptian paper, were "initiated at the top."

What did he mean by "the top"? He cited the Egyptian government, which was facing a tight election at the time of the protests. "It was convenient during that election to look like defenders of poor oppressed Muslims in Denmark," he said.

Mr. Rose also dismissed the idea that Muslims in Denmark were in need of any such protectors. Those disseminating the cartoons "present a picture as if the Muslim community were on the verge of going to a concentration camp." He countered that "Denmark has 50 to 100 different religions. They said Muslims were not allowed to build mosques—there are more than 100 of them. We even have Muslim schools and Muslim graveyards." Greater than 4/5ths of Denmark's population are Lutherans, members of the state-supported church, Church of Denmark—many are non-practicing members, however.

Late into the session, he theorized a bit. "In a way these cartoons are an act of inclusion and integration because the cartoonists are integrating the Muslim minority into a Danish tradition of satire. They are saying, you are just like everyone else."

Mr. Rose was also critical of the European intelligentsia, who he felt were "intellectually unprepared" to grapple with the cartoons. Members of the Western European left in particular, he said, "are too hesitant to stand up and speak out for their rights. There's fear of insisting that if you live here, there are certain values and that is part of what makes this society open and free and prosperous."

Mr. Rose became most passionate when discussing religious freedom. "What is freedom of religion? First, it is the right to say no to religion. I believe strongly in freedom of religion. When I go to a mosque, I will not bring cartoons, I will take of my shoes, I will make my daughter dress properly. But if people expect me to respect their own taboos and rules outside their holy houses, I don't think that's respect, I think that's submission."

He elaborated later. "Religion is most profoundly respected in secular society. Places where religion is in power are the exact places you don't have freedom of religion. In Saudi Arabia you can't wear a cross, you can't have a bible. You're not allowed to have a Christmas tree."

Despite this self-proclaimed passion for religious freedom, Mr. Rose seemed surprised by the religious fervor the cartoons had tapped. During the throes of the crisis, when Mr. Rose was frequently being interviewed, he noticed when speaking with Arab journalists that they had, he said, "this irrational relationship with Mohammed—like he was their father or their brother."

In a way, Mr. Rose took an optimistic view of the long term. He argued that the cartoons had brought previously "latent" issues, such as free speech and immigration, into the daily conversation. He said that text book companies had approached the paper; they hoped to include the drawings in their products. "Then," he said, "second, third, and fourth generation Muslims will be confronted early on."
—Willa Paskin

This new romantic fairy tale, directed by Martha Coolidge, is not exactly patterned after la princesse de Philadelphie , but Paige Morgan, the all-American blonde played by Julia Stiles, looks peachy in a king's ransom worth of crown jewels. She's a girl from Wisconsin whose friends are engaged, getting married and relinquishing their independence. She rebels by going to med school. Meanwhile, way off in some castle in Elsinore, blond, blue-eyed Prince Edward Valdemar Dangaard of Denmark (camera-ready Luke Mably) is no Hamlet, although he is always in trouble with fast cars and even faster peasants. Eschewing family tradition, he figures that what he needs is a year in Wisconsin to meet foxy American college girls, see. So he passes himself off as an ordinary guy named Eddie and moves into a cramped dorm with his valet/guardian/baby-sitter/best friend Soren (Ben Miller). When the campus gets a look at the valet, who irons his shirts and makes him eggs Benedict on a hot plate, everyone thinks that Eddie is gay. A new infatuation with Paige, his lab partner in chemistry class, eases the tension, and when he accompanies her home to her family's Wisconsin dairy farm for Thanksgiving, the friendship heats up even more. Nothing like milking cows to set a crown prince's hormones raging. Her skeptical brothers are still suspicious, until he shows them how to soup up the engines on their riding mowers for the local tractor race. What a sport: the future king of Denmark, wearing yellow hats shaped like wedges of cheddar cheese and racing the local rednecks on riding lawnmowers. Now everyone's in love with Eddie, even the cows. They still don't know he's a prince hiding out incognito-until, that is, the ink-stained wretches from the tabloids charge onto the campus and blow his cover. Now it's Ms. Stiles' turn to house-guest. In Denmark, she rides through the golden gates of the royal palace on her dreamboat's royal stallion. Overnight, she turns from a Purina Feed ad into Princess Di. Now it's the king and queen of Denmark (James Fox and Miranda Richardson) who raise their eyebrows condescendingly. But nothing can deter the prince. This is the kind of love that Hans Christian Andersen and Walt Disney dreamed about, and Ms. Stiles is all set to produce royal babies. But then the screenwriters get a dose of royal guilt and bring Paige to her senses. Who can stand all those trips on the royal yacht, picnics on the royal riverbanks, couturier gowns for the royal ball and seven-course dinners on gold china in the palace dining room when you can go home to dissect frogs in bio-science class? You can hear the groans of girls from 9 to 19 all the way to Copenhagen. But wait! Miraculously, Paige's American ingenuity, pragmatism and unselfish influence on the prince turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to the monarchy. Cue trumpets. Fade to Cinderella finale. Get that big farmhouse foot into that glass slipper, girl. This movie is going for a happy ending even if it kills everybody on the payroll.

The situations in The Prince and Me never delve beneath the surface of contrivance, so the characters are never truly believable. But Julia Stiles is such a fetching actress that her sincerity camouflages make-believe better than anything you can buy at Bergdorf's. Director Martha Coolidge has flexed her feminist muscles on many occasions, but this time the material offers her no edge at all. Mostly, she just lets the pretty Ms. Stiles and the even prettier Mr. Mably do their stuff while the film keeps rolling, and she's wise enough to get out of the way. The resulting confection is so sweet it could give you diabetes, but how can you get tough with a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve like a smile button?

Swinging Sisters

It must be in the genes. You've heard about sisters named Andrews, brothers named Smothers, families of Fondas and assorted Baldwins, Arquettes and Gabors. Now here come the Callaways! One of New York's cabaret treasures, Ann Hampton Callaway, is a jazz high priestess, and her sister Liz is one of Broadway's most talented but underrated stars-in-waiting. Together, they are knocking them dead at Feinstein's at the Regency with a high-flying show that embraces all of the styles they have mastered in their separate careers. It's nothing short of terrific. In the arid territory that signifies what's left of the dying swank supper-club scene, they already made a blinding impact nine years ago with an act called Sibling Revelry . (You can buy it on CD.) Relative Harmony , the clever new act they're unveiling now, is a sort of star-spangled sequel in which both sisters polish off the art of what they do best, together and apart, when somebody shows them a piano and says, "Go, girls, go!" The results are sophisticated, humorous and intensely, relentlessly musical.

Ann wraps her celebrated chops around the contrapuntal chords of the jazz riff "Cloudburst," then Liz meets the ultimate challenge of absurd meters, unpronounceable syllables, daunting modulations and shifting tempos from Stephen Sondheim, singing "Another Hundred Lyrics Just Flew Out of My Brain" to the tune of you-know-what tongue-twisting classic from Company ! When Ann good-naturedly interrupts Liz's applause to show off her awards for her singing-songwriting accomplishments, Liz holds up her Emmy. (Both have been Tony-nominated, too.) If Liz warms the cockles with the kind of 11 o'clock numbers she has perfected in shows like Baby and Cats , then Ann stops the heart with a powerful, throaty and adrenaline-pumped torch arrangement of Jerry Herman's "If He Walked into My Life" from Mame that makes you wonder why she isn't starring on Broadway in a show of her own. If Ann electrifies with jazz pyrotechnics, Liz demonstrates how adaptable she is in her sister's milieu with some hot licks of her own. When the versatility and harmony of their two styles blend on an awesome Harold Arlen juxtaposition of "Stormy Weather" and "When the Sun Comes Out," the craft, musicianship and pure beauty of their voices is as good as it gets. Doubling your pleasure like the Doublemint twins, they are all of the King Sisters rolled into one and cut in half to go around. If there were any more like them at home, it would be too much for the neighborhood.

With so many jazz, swing, pop and show tunes to cover, there's only one thing left to do. Yes, there's a killer medley that leaves no stone unturned, no style unexplored and no customer underwhelmed. On 18 songs, from "Bosom Buddies" to "Ohio" to "Happy Days Are Here Again," their voices blend and soar and intertwine like two colorful balloons in the breeze over Central Park. Most cabaret acts amount to nothing more than misinformed, misguided amateurs grinding through all the wrong songs in mewling agony. After what I've suffered through lately, it is not only gratifying to hear real, genuine, supersonic talent on a cabaret stage, but downright miraculous as well. Get hip to the Callaways and learn what a great cabaret act is all about.

Pardon Me, Please

Into every popular and successful theater tradition, some rain must eventually fall. But in the case of "Encores!" at City Center, the second production of the 2004 season, George and Ira Gershwin's 1933 musical flop Pardon My English , was more like a monsoon.

One of the pleasures of this series of staged concerts of shows that haven't been seen for decades is trying to figure out why they weren't better appreciated in their own day. In the case of Pardon My English , the question on a number of minds was why this paralyzing farce was ever produced in the first place. I could name a dozen shows worthy of a slick "Encores!" refurbishing without pausing for a comma. Pardon My English would never be one of them. There's no dishonor in failure, but this show was such a catastrophe from the beginning that even Ira Gershwin has gone on record as hating every minute of it. Writers and directors came and went, cast members were replaced, the original star (Jack Buchanan) walked out during the out-of-town previews, and what New Yorkers finally saw on Jan. 20, 1933, was a dismal mess that folded after 46 performances. In his famous book Lyrics on Several Occasions , Ira Gershwin wrote: "Opening night in New York, I stood among the few standees, but only for the first twenty minutes. A bad cold and a lukewarm audience had me home by 9:30."

No wonder. The show made audiences nervous from the overture on, for good reason. Here, at the height of the Depression-at the same time that Hitler rose to power in Germany-was a show set in a Dresden speakeasy that opens with German customers and waiters singing "Drink, drink, drink … to the dear old Fatherland!" (According to historian Gerald Bordman's American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle , published by Oxford University Press, the show's German setting was disturbing to many in light of the daily headlines; the night it closed, Berlin's Reichstag burned.) Between what Ira Gershwin called "the worst lyric I ever wrote" ("I gave up pie and ice cream / 'Cause your lips make better desserts / You'll pardon my Polish / But you're the nerts!") and dialogue like "Oh, my pulchritudinous parlor maid from Potsdam!", the muddled plot is about six addled psychiatrists examining the case of a split personality, one of whom is an English secret agent with a passion for American gangster films, and the other a German bootlegger named Golo Schmidt who is also the criminal ringleader of a gang of thieves who rob the home of a Dresden police commissioner, who is also the sauerkraut king. (The alter egos were both played with a large helping of ham and sung with accompanying relish by Brian D'Arcy James.) There is also something about a pair of Americans who are wrongly arrested for the robbery and a 40-pound liverwurst. This is quite enough, thank you-an assessment with which the appalled looks on the faces of the first-nighters around me at this "Encores!" fiasco seemed to agree. Under the circumstances, it is worth noting that three notable songs emerged from the otherwise awkward and brainless score. "My Cousin from Milwaukee" and "The Lorelei" were both turned into showstoppers by the always splendid Emily Skinner. Stealing the show as buxom Polish chanteuse Gita Gobel, "the Knightengale from Kracow," she was as guttural and too-Teutonic as Madeleine Kahn impersonating Marlene Dietrich in Blazing Saddles . And "Isn't it a Pity" originated here, too. Would you believe that it was a duet between two lovers-a world-traveling British agent who can't speak German and a non-English-speaking daughter of the sauerkraut king? Which finally explains the beloved lyric, "You reading Heine / I, somewhere in China." You learn the darnedest things at "Encores!"-some of which are better left unknown, if you ask me.