THE NEW COOKED


Last night we checked out the new raw food restaurant. My old bosses from the vegetarian place were eating there front and center; apparently they're now raw foodies, although their restaurant is not. Yet. Because raw is the new cooked. (And after that everyone will be fruitarian, wait and see). Suffice to say we ate our way through most of the menu (at home, Dorian eats with an oversize fork and spoon). The mock burger, pista falafel, flax pizza, pulverized kale, zucchini "pasta" and stuffed slimy mushrooms were tasty, yes -- because of all the garlic, onions and oil (cold-pressed of course). The fake cheesecake and mock mousse were divine.

But afterwords Dorian was starving and I had The Gas and unquenchable thirst. Today we both felt hung over. My yoga practice was torture and I was so run down I had to cancel my blood donation. Coincidence? I don't think so.





TWO BAGS FULL...

....of good junk is what I brought to The Ark today. Unlike the B.E., they don't chase you down the street and force you to take back your stuff on what is already a very bad day. No, there are receiving bins in the front of the store and they actually thank you for your donation.

When I told Dorian Black-the-Packrat about my need to shed he said, quoting George Carlin, "Your house is just a place to keep your stuff while you're out getting more stuff." Ouch.




SUBCONTINENTAL CONTENT




Deepa Mehta's new film Water opened here today. It deals with widowhood in India, which sucks in ways we can only imagine. Like her previous film, "Fire," it incensed the Hindu fundamentalists. They rioted and stormed the set in Varanasi and burnt effigies of Mehta and the government finally closed down the production; the shooting secretly resumed nearly five years later in Sri Lanka. Mehta, who also made 1999's harrowing "Earth," (about Partition) was interviewed today on the public radio show "Worldview." To hear it click here.

In today's Salon, Sandip Roy riffs on Harvard plagiarist Kaavya Viswanathan and what an impossibly high bar overacheivers such as Mehta, Lahiri, Roy, Rai and Rushdie have set for other Indians.

Lucky for me there are no similarly successful Danish-Swedish-French-Norwegian-German-Russian role models that I've failed to emulate, thus allowing me to wallow guilt-free in my mediocrity. Phew.