Muscato

Recent Actions

• Commented on Owner of trendy Manhattan restaurant Paradou plumbs new depths of evil bad-bossitude
  FWIW, I believe Paradou isn't in Park Slope, but rather the if anything trendier Meatpacking District in Manhattan (which I actually saw one commenter refer to, I can only hope in jest, as MePaDi). But wherever he is, he clearly...
• Commented on Hallowe'en is safe
  But wait - my mother's next-door-neighbor's Cousin Ariadne knows a woman whose son's colleague's daughter totally got an apple with a razor blade in it, in 1979. Doesn't that count for anything - and won't anybody think of the CHILDREN?...
• Commented on Levitation secret revealed (70 years ago)
  @Anon 4: Foolish to want one? Hell, no - I think these loating yogi chairs are going to be next year's must-have garden feature - "Amaze Your Friends!"......
• Commented on Birdsong Radio
  I started playing this while sitting on my porch; suddenly, birdwise, we have the most popular house in the neighborhood. I suspect that some of these may be unfamiliar songs to our birds (I live on the south-east coast of...
• Commented on Shirky: "What will replace newspapers?" is a plea to not be living through a revolution
  I was startled recently to stumble on an essay written in 2002 by singer/songwriter Janis Ian on some of these very themes. As someone who was an expert on audiences (rather than on, say, intellectual property), and who was finding...
• Commented on Excellent public speaking advice
  #7 (David Carroll): On MSP PP/multi-media - probably a combination of the two. In my field PP, reigns supreme and is enormously abused, to the point that in the last two years I've not seen one presentation that wasn't a...
• Commented on Excellent public speaking advice
  What it is - although this might make it that much scarier for some - is acting. Not having a message and wanting to deliver it, but having a message and the technique to convey to the audience that you...
• Commented on Business Card Etiquette In Japan
  20 years after a couple of seasons doing business in Tokyo and Sapporo, I still have trouble just handing over or accepting cards; it seems so wrong. That those trips were my first real business experience I suppose branded it...
• Commented on Giant vintage banana lamp
  This would be a great addition to any Carmen Miranda / Josephine Baker themed room. And absolutely nowhere else on earth....
• Commented on Instant corner shop, just add shipping container
  As has been pointed out, in much of Africa, a shipping container is nothing more than the local equivalent of a prefab. When I was living in Ghana, one of my favorite places was an Italian restaurant cobbled together from...
• Commented on Jack Imel plays "Pagan Love Song" on Lawrence Welk 1958
  This is in my top three ever favorite trick marimba acts, right up there with the Kim Sisters and Carmen Miranda in The Gang's All Here. FWIW, the song is from 1928's hit The Pagan, which starred Ramon Novarro and...
• Commented on Gender Analyzer: did a man or woman write that blog?
  Three errors - and then being taken for a woman. Takes me back to the 80s, when at least I had feathered hair and too much eye makeup......
• Commented on Eat Me: memoir and cookbook from Shopsin's, the best, most eclectic eatery in Greenwich Village
  When I lived in Manhattan, I was always fairly puzzled by the mystique of the place (the old West Village one). The food never impressed, and the ambiance made it feel very much what one pal called it: Serendipity for...
• Commented on Apartments Designed to Challenge Residents
  This sounds waaaaaay too much like my worst dreams, which alway include a missing staircase, a door to nowhere, or a room that suddenly shifts its axis. What's wrong with being a blissfully soporific oldster in a deeply comfortable chintz...
• Commented on New Yorker Film Festival: The 5 Scariest Movies Ever?
  Given that the only movie that has truly given me nightmares was Lili (yes, the Leslie Caron kiddie musical - but omigod those puppets creeped me out), I may not be the best source, but Threads, a British TV movie,...
• Commented on American Legion WWII posters
  Yeah, I have a feeling that Claude and Nina there weren't exactly essential to the war effort. The next morning he had to be at the Century Club by lunchtime and she had to meet Mary Haines over at Sydney's......
• Commented on Human rights worker: JFK's secondary screening procedures are "human rights abuses"
  Belgium (and anyone else wondering whether there's a difference among airports) - the answer is a definite yes. As part of my work, I send dozens of Arab travelers to the U.S. every year, and not one flies into or...
• Commented on Dog cloner Joyce McKinney sought over burglary to fund horse's wooden leg
  #68: Actually, my understanding is that she and an accomplice escaped from the UK disguised as members of a mime troupe. There just can't be any detail of this whole saga that isn't perfectly, exquisitely insane. I hope John Waters...
• Commented on Scamorama: book explains how to get into scambaiting as a hobby
  I've lived in Ghana; I've traveled in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, and Mali. I've helped run literacy and computer-skills programs, and I've dealt, in country, with Westerners who were in the process of being very badly scammed. The people...
• Commented on Found photo of woman posing next to her portrait
  #2 Oy do I feel old, but how can I be the first to point this out? Those are so not extensions! That, my young friend, is a fall. Or perhaps even a wiglet. But not extensions....
• Commented on South China Mall: the largest (ghost) mall in the world
  I'm surprised that no one's pointed out the irony of this feature running in a paper in the UAE, which must be the present-day champion of massive pointless building sprees. I wouldn't be surprised to see an article not unlike...
• Commented on Seizures caused by music
  Having seen a feature on Stacey Gayle and her unusual problem on TV (nightline? who knows...), the problem indeed got much larger than "Temperature" (add me to the list of those who don't blame her seizing out on that one)...
• Commented on Girl in a plastic wig from 1963
  I'm voting for Grandma as the owner of the mystery leg. All I can think of is the dinner table, off in the next room, groaning under the weight of mid-century interpretations of Old Country recipes, not one molecule of...
• Commented on Lovely curved bookcases
  This is, I think, the second most unpleasant book shelving you've ever featured; the first is here: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/19/library-built-into-a.html and I still have nightmares about it....
• Commented on Couple attached by a 15-feet string for 24 hours
  Thank you, Bucket, for #6 above. Now I'll definitely be getting that new keyboard I've been grousing for, what with the coffee spewed deep into the keys. And I, too, call lame. Mr. Muscato and I live and work together,...
• Commented on Screengrab from donut sleeper cell training video surfaces
  Glazed? The mind reels; I don't want to think how it got that way......
• Commented on Futuristic 1931 miniatures depict NYC in 1980
  "Just Imagine" - ugh! One of the few early talkies I've seen that's every bit as bad as their general reputation. And boy, Jeff, are you right - El Brendel makes Paulie Shore look like Zero Mostel (and I bet...
• Commented on Videos of the worst pop songs ever
  One word: "Wildfire". http://youtube.com/watch?v=gOOb6fEHPQ4 It's the "My Friend Flicka" of pop, and not in a good way....
• Commented on 8-year-old boy suspended for sniffing marker
  Yikes! And when I think of all those years basking in the sweet, sweet fumes of ditto worksheets and desperately volunteering to run the ditto machine. That was a high that got one through fifth period and set the stage...
• Commented on Library built into a staircase
  I don't know why, but I find this oddly unsettling and vertiginous. Perhaps it's just the combination of two activities - stair climbing and reading - that I've never thought of simultaneously before, but I have to say it scares...