NEW YORK
Back from a long weekend in NYC. Excellent time. We stayed at a friend's apartment here. We saw an excellent play. We ate at two great restaurants for brunch and dinner on Saturday. Had some great cupcakes. Unfortunately we also witnessed the immediate aftermath of this. A macabre scene.
We bought some things here and here. We visited the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and saw the last day of the excellent Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Gallery (highly recommended for its authentic Vienna atmosphere). And we almost ran into big trouble with some suspecting people because of this. Some b-list celebrity sightings: 1, 2, 3 (on the right), 4 (no idea who she was but my 29 year-old brother knew her (!). And finally, we got bumped up to executive class on the way home -- a great cap to the weekend.
HUNTING DICK
New Yorker
Some breaches of decorum are easier to rectify than others. Perhaps you have been invited to attend a memorial ceremony at Auschwitz and you arrive in a parka and hiking boots, only to find that most of the men are wearing dark suits. Solution: Buy an overcoat and, next time, call ahead to ask about attire. Or, say, you lose your temper and tell a senior member of the United States Senate to “go fuck yourself.” Solution: Issue a statement acknowledging your frank words and let the fuss subside without attracting further attention. Vice-President Dick Cheney carried himself successfully through both of these faux pas. But his accidental shooting of the Austin lawyer Harry M. Whittington presents a more delicate question of etiquette: What is the proper way to proceed after blasting six to two hundred pieces of birdshot into the chest, neck, and face of a personal acquaintance? Mylar balloons? African violets? A casserole?
On this point of protocol, even the experts are indistinct. “Coveys and Singles: The Handbook of Quail Hunting,” for instance, focusses on such subjects as apparel. “The quail hunter’s underwear can vary. . . ,” its author, Bob Gooch, writes. “Some hunters prefer fishnet-type underwear which permits the body heat to circulate more freely.” The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s skills manual details elaborate chivalric rites with regard to everything from field manners (“Don’t be a slob or a poacher!” “Never be rude or hog shots”) to the conveyance of quarry (“Be discreet and respectful of the animal as you transport it home. Never make the carcass and head the subject of public display”), but is less exacting when it comes to how to behave if what you’ve shot is, in fact, a human being. Only the following mores can be established: The ethical hunter’s first obligation is to determine responsiveness in the injured party. After shouting, “Are you all right?” he must check for hemorrhaging. Finally, he is expected to determine, “Is there blood-soaked clothing? Are there pools of blood on the ground?”
The literature offers few clues to how an errant marksman should negotiate what Dickens calls “the delicacy of his situation.” (In Chapter 7 of “The Pickwick Papers,” Mr. Tupman, during a rook shoot, “had saved the lives of innumerable unoffending birds by receiving a portion of the charge in his left arm.”) In Jimmy Carter’s “An Outdoor Journal,” his ode to the role of fresh air in forging gentlemanly virtue, he hints at the predicament of the friend-shooter, a sort of shadowy social limbo, fraught with shame and imputations of poor couth. According to Carter, “If anyone grew careless and endangered a neighbor by shooting too low, it was a serious matter indeed, warranting an angry shout of condemnation and a damaged reputation.” Grover Cleveland, in “Fishing and Shooting Sketches,” concurs. “The careless or bungling shooter,” he writes, must not be surprised if even his dog abandons him, “leaving the chagrined and disappointed hunter to return home alone-legs weary, gameless and ashamed.”
The 1969 edition of “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette” includes a long discussion of “Hunting and Shooting” (don’t reach for shots, offer all game to your host), but makes no mention of how to behave in the case of shooting someone in the face. “Letters of Apology and Complaint” offers only this: “A short, sincere note . . . enclosed in a box of flowers, may help one’s cause.” “Debrett’s,” which acknowledges that the country weekend can be a “social minefield,” is exhaustive but severe. “Being dangerous is considered frightfully rude. . . . Shooting manners expect the guilty gun to leave the party immediately . . . and if the mishap is a tragic one . . . never to shoot again. Shooting form also expects the other guns to be deeply discreet about the incident.” The Vice-President’s instincts on this last point have been impeccable.
Notwithstanding the antics of the misfiring narrator of Tom Lehrer’s “The Hunting Song”-he taxidermies the heads of “two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow”-surely it is inadvisable for the shooter to present himself, as Cheney did, at the next day’s quail lunch. So how do you make it up to the fellow you mistook for a bobwhite? In the view of Peter Post, the director of the Emily Post Institute and the author of “Essential Manners for Men,” the key is to acknowledge the misstep and then make active attempts at redress. Chocolates aren’t quite right for the occasion, but the Vice-President would be safe with flowers. “A springtime mix,” Post said. “That would bring a bit of joy to a drab hospital room.”
SONGS OF THE DAY
Dance all night - Ryan Adams
On the other side - The Strokes
Back from a long weekend in NYC. Excellent time. We stayed at a friend's apartment here. We saw an excellent play. We ate at two great restaurants for brunch and dinner on Saturday. Had some great cupcakes. Unfortunately we also witnessed the immediate aftermath of this. A macabre scene.
We bought some things here and here. We visited the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, and saw the last day of the excellent Egon Schiele exhibit at the Neue Gallery (highly recommended for its authentic Vienna atmosphere). And we almost ran into big trouble with some suspecting people because of this. Some b-list celebrity sightings: 1, 2, 3 (on the right), 4 (no idea who she was but my 29 year-old brother knew her (!). And finally, we got bumped up to executive class on the way home -- a great cap to the weekend.
HUNTING DICK
New Yorker
Some breaches of decorum are easier to rectify than others. Perhaps you have been invited to attend a memorial ceremony at Auschwitz and you arrive in a parka and hiking boots, only to find that most of the men are wearing dark suits. Solution: Buy an overcoat and, next time, call ahead to ask about attire. Or, say, you lose your temper and tell a senior member of the United States Senate to “go fuck yourself.” Solution: Issue a statement acknowledging your frank words and let the fuss subside without attracting further attention. Vice-President Dick Cheney carried himself successfully through both of these faux pas. But his accidental shooting of the Austin lawyer Harry M. Whittington presents a more delicate question of etiquette: What is the proper way to proceed after blasting six to two hundred pieces of birdshot into the chest, neck, and face of a personal acquaintance? Mylar balloons? African violets? A casserole?
On this point of protocol, even the experts are indistinct. “Coveys and Singles: The Handbook of Quail Hunting,” for instance, focusses on such subjects as apparel. “The quail hunter’s underwear can vary. . . ,” its author, Bob Gooch, writes. “Some hunters prefer fishnet-type underwear which permits the body heat to circulate more freely.” The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s skills manual details elaborate chivalric rites with regard to everything from field manners (“Don’t be a slob or a poacher!” “Never be rude or hog shots”) to the conveyance of quarry (“Be discreet and respectful of the animal as you transport it home. Never make the carcass and head the subject of public display”), but is less exacting when it comes to how to behave if what you’ve shot is, in fact, a human being. Only the following mores can be established: The ethical hunter’s first obligation is to determine responsiveness in the injured party. After shouting, “Are you all right?” he must check for hemorrhaging. Finally, he is expected to determine, “Is there blood-soaked clothing? Are there pools of blood on the ground?”
The literature offers few clues to how an errant marksman should negotiate what Dickens calls “the delicacy of his situation.” (In Chapter 7 of “The Pickwick Papers,” Mr. Tupman, during a rook shoot, “had saved the lives of innumerable unoffending birds by receiving a portion of the charge in his left arm.”) In Jimmy Carter’s “An Outdoor Journal,” his ode to the role of fresh air in forging gentlemanly virtue, he hints at the predicament of the friend-shooter, a sort of shadowy social limbo, fraught with shame and imputations of poor couth. According to Carter, “If anyone grew careless and endangered a neighbor by shooting too low, it was a serious matter indeed, warranting an angry shout of condemnation and a damaged reputation.” Grover Cleveland, in “Fishing and Shooting Sketches,” concurs. “The careless or bungling shooter,” he writes, must not be surprised if even his dog abandons him, “leaving the chagrined and disappointed hunter to return home alone-legs weary, gameless and ashamed.”
The 1969 edition of “Vogue’s Book of Etiquette” includes a long discussion of “Hunting and Shooting” (don’t reach for shots, offer all game to your host), but makes no mention of how to behave in the case of shooting someone in the face. “Letters of Apology and Complaint” offers only this: “A short, sincere note . . . enclosed in a box of flowers, may help one’s cause.” “Debrett’s,” which acknowledges that the country weekend can be a “social minefield,” is exhaustive but severe. “Being dangerous is considered frightfully rude. . . . Shooting manners expect the guilty gun to leave the party immediately . . . and if the mishap is a tragic one . . . never to shoot again. Shooting form also expects the other guns to be deeply discreet about the incident.” The Vice-President’s instincts on this last point have been impeccable.
Notwithstanding the antics of the misfiring narrator of Tom Lehrer’s “The Hunting Song”-he taxidermies the heads of “two game wardens, seven hunters, and a pure-bred Guernsey cow”-surely it is inadvisable for the shooter to present himself, as Cheney did, at the next day’s quail lunch. So how do you make it up to the fellow you mistook for a bobwhite? In the view of Peter Post, the director of the Emily Post Institute and the author of “Essential Manners for Men,” the key is to acknowledge the misstep and then make active attempts at redress. Chocolates aren’t quite right for the occasion, but the Vice-President would be safe with flowers. “A springtime mix,” Post said. “That would bring a bit of joy to a drab hospital room.”
SONGS OF THE DAY
Dance all night - Ryan Adams
On the other side - The Strokes
posted by D @ 10:37 AM
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