Kiss the cook

George Steel manages to hold out for 140 words before dropping the inevitable name in this month’s issue of Edible Manhattan.
The Man of Steel continues:
The places that are famous tend not to be good. People are looking for an experience of authenticity and not really using their mouth.
La Cieca should note that he’s probably not talking about NYCO here. But do be sure to check out who was present when George had his first endive salad.

ummmm..
..WAIT…
First we’re supposed to be throwing brick-bats at NYCO for performing in the House that Koch built…
Now , we’re not totake them seriously on account that George Steele ate with Lenny B, once…?..or is it that he admits to not being a good baker…?
BTW…it seems that Mr. Steel has wonderful culinary tastes and interests, at least…this article made me very hungry…!
we’re supposed to be throwing brick-bats at NYCO for [insert reason here].
A “house guest” of “Leonard’s”? I wonder if he made the cut to be invited to the Canary Islands! I’ll take Tyler Florence over endive any day, but Fairway should be in every major city.
It’s a great pic of Lenny, BTW
I have to agree, La Cieca, that the general impression is that if George Steel says, “How do you do?” or anything else, or if he does mot say “How do you do?” or anything else, you will denounce him just for being George Steel, and NYCO just for being NYCO.
Whatever your mysterious grudge against that company may be … out with it, man! Let us know why nothing they do evades your scorn.
I agree entirely that their board and Susan whatsherface deserve every possible hint of contempt the world can spare from American Idol and Al Qaeda for Les Folies Mortier, but … why are you so eager to bury the company? Would you be upset if they defied your predictions and survived? I wouldn’t be – I think New York deserves two major league opera companies. I’m sorry they’ve gone and went and been idiots excited by who knows what blind ambition, but … wasn’t that last year’s news?
Steel seems an amiable guy – everyone I know who has worked with him thinks well of him – and I’d be pleased if he succeeds. Also if they fired that woman on the board, but maybe she has so much money we can still guilt-trip her into handing some of it over.
Others have said to me: Why does La Cieca hate Steel and NYCO so much? Has she ever called HIM a fucking genius? (Probably yes, but ironically.) Is this revenge because NYCO did not ask Scotto back to direct after the Traviata?
So all New York is wondering. Both of us.
Hans: The proof of the fucking is in the pudding, or to put it another way: we haven’t seen any opera production by Steel’s NYCO yet. The namedropping perhaps grates on my last gay nerve more than it does on others’, but you must admit that good old Lenny seems to crop up in the most peculiar places, anecdote-wise.
La Cieca is at her best when she changes her mind, so perhaps we have that to look forward to.
Brava Cieca!
La Cieca:
One MUSICIAN mentioning another MUSICIAN (and doing it primarily for the sake of talking about Lenny’s Cook) doesn’t seem like that much of ostentatious “name-dropping”..does it?
#4: It IS a great pic!
#8: Where is composure and graciousness? Anger does not become you.
By the way…Quanto Painy Fakor:
Just watched a recent Charlie Rose interview, and whose name should he drop but…Zara Leander! Seems she was a poster child for the NAZI cause(is that why you posted a clip of her on the ‘Obama is Hitler’ thread?) HOWEVER…rumor has it that she was a secret agent for the soviets all along. Thats where he got the idea for the Bridget von Hammersmark character in his latest flick.
By ‘he’ I was refering to Mr. Rose’s interviewee, Quentin Tarantino.
George Steel was very close to Leonard Bernstein for years. He was closer to him than I am to any of my uncles. If one of my uncles had a cook — and Steele’s not the only one who raves constantly about that one — would it not be pretentious in a different way to mention her and not mention that she was legendary cook to the most famous musician of his time?
Leonard Bernstein left one of his conducting tail-coats to George Steel because he regarded him as a kind of son. That G.S. should mention him — in this case in a remarkably venial way — is not remarkable.
I assure you that he could have told far more self-aggrandizing stories of L.B.