“Billions of dollars in U.S. tax breaks to encourage home ownership, retirement savings, business start-ups and education mostly benefit top income earners and do little to help low- and middle-income people build wealth, a report released on Wednesday said. The U.S. government spent nearly $400 billion, mostly through tax breaks, in 2009 to promote home ownership and other wealth-building strategies and more than half of that benefited the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers, said the study sponsored by the nonprofit Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED).”
-Yeah, fine, you can use numbers to make anything sound the way you want. You know what I don’t see in here? The part where it reminds us that the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers are better people who work harder and deserve it more. Or maybe the hippies at the Corporation for Enterprise Development don’t want to remind you about that fact, hmmm?

by Jeff Hart

I hadn’t gone even a block from my office, on my way to poke around a Midtown cult in search of a love connection for my literal godsend of a client, when I made the tail. It was a pair of Cro-Magnon neophytes with the ready-to-pop glamour muscles found on any city goon squad, but the rigid spines and precise, angular haircuts that told me besides rank amateurs they were also likely Privates or Sergeants. I couldn’t think of a reason that Uncle Sam would want to pick on me and I wasn’t all that curious, so I scooted around the orange vests piling up decapitated Chinese dolls and ducked into Ahmet’s bodega.

This week’s piece of advice: get to know the guy that sells you your cigarettes.

For instance, I could tell you that Ahmet’s the second generation of eyes to observe the Lower East Side from behind this particular counter. I could tell you that his folks came over from Turkey, that he’s on his third wife, and that he’ll only put the pork bacon on your breakfast sandwich if you ask real nice.

“Morning Ahmet,” I said, as I booked it for the employees-only door. “Some real weather we’re having.”

 “Whole neighborhood smells like pepper steak,” he replied, as he scurried to the back of the store to fling open the fire exit.

Ahmet’s helped me shake tails in the past. It always plays out the same. I hide in his office, he barks at my tagalong in half-fake Farsi while pointing out the back exit. It doesn’t take Operation Enduring Gullibility long to get the picture and go barreling into the back alley, hot on a trail that I never left. Or a trail that I never got on in the first place, depending on your preferred usage of trail-related cliches.

The coast clear, Ahmet poked his head in.

“I think they spoke Farsi.”

“No shit?”

“Definitely not from around here.”

“No shit.”

“What’d they want?”

“You mean you didn’t ask them?”

Ahmet frowned at me.

“How about a sandwich?”

With Ahmet gone to slice turkey, I considered which branch of the government I might have hacked off enough to send some barely camouflaged hatchet men my way. I couldn’t think of any, unless they were calling in Special Forces for not filing taxes. Could it be related to Fennel? I didn’t see it. Blowback from John the Bulldog? It’d likely be years before they got around to scooping up trash on Coney Island, no one was going to find that poor slob. Perplexing.

I picked up Ahmet’s office phone and called Dot.

I should explain that I am not the most technologically savvy. I’ve never believed in the whole Internet thing. Always smelled like a long con to me. I’ve also never owned a cellular phone, just like I’ve never strapped a flashing neon arrow to myself-I don’t want to be found that easy. Of course, this has led to me being referred to by some, including Dot, as an anachronism, a term that I’ve never particularly minded. When times get rough, be the man out of time.

I met Dot at a networking event thrown by those cutthroat sons of bitches at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. She looked to me how one of those anime characters with the purple hair and neck tattoos would look like if they suddenly decided to go straight and become a banker. Both of us on the job, both out of our element, we made a euphemistic exchange of business cards in the coat room. I’d been using her for my Internet ever since. She has this amazing trick where no matter where I call from, she knows it’s me. She never says hello.

“There was another art burning here last night, Royce,” she began, as if resuming a leisurely conversation we’d been having. “It was beautiful. Until they had to cancel on account of the Chinese.”

“Isn’t that just like the Chinese to intercede on behalf of the arts.”

“You make me laugh,” she said, although she didn’t. “I’m glad you called. I was worried.”

“Oh?”

“Your name has come up a lot lately in conjunction with a certain canine gangster.”

“Thank you for the heads up on that.”

“Invest in a telegraph and next time I’ll tap you out a 911.”

“My name come up anywhere else?”

“Here and there. You should come see me. I’m at the Trump McCarren.”

“Sorry, Dot. I hate what they’ve done with the place. “

“If this isn’t a social call, I’m sure you won’t mind if I start running the meter.”

“What have you got on a guy named Wayne Maker? Runs a help-me-help-you racket.”

“Why Royce, I think it’s wonderful that you’ve finally decided to file down those rough edges of yours with some third party administered self love. For a guy like you, finding yourself should be a cinch.”

“It’s not me I’m looking for. Guy named Paul Fennel. Scrubby little weirdo. Run him too.”

“Fennel like the pasta?”

“Like the plant. You’re thinking of fusilli.”

“Mm. In that case, call me after dinner. I might have something for you.”

Dot hung up.

Ahmet had my sandwich ready when I wandered out of his office. While I ate, I took stock of myself in the hubcap mirror hanging over his front door. Early thirties but could pass for late forties, a t-shirt and jeans, and the shadow of a beard that didn’t quite fill in right.

“What do you say, Ahmet? Do I look like the kind of guy that needs a rigorous soul saving?”

“A rigorous shower, maybe.”

“I think that’ll do.”

Outside, I stopped to watch a group of puzzled sanitation workers trying to figure out what to do with a squid that had fallen from the sky mangled but alive. One of the orange vests emptied a bottle of water on the thing and it slapped its two intact tentacles against the sidewalk in confused appreciation. I sympathized.

I headed uptown to get unfettered.

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Jeff Hart lives in Brooklyn. His other writing can be found over at Culture Blues.

Photo by Fabio, from Flickr.

“The Piophilidae are valuable to police in ageing corpses and time of death, as they do not colonise bodies until three to six months after death. Martín-Vega speculates that one of the reasons T. cynophila has evaded entomologists for so long is because collections are not usually made in winter, when the flies are most active. Nor are most entomologists inclined to collect insects from highly decayed corpses.”
–Gross! Cool! The thyreophora cynophilahila, a kind of fly last seen in 1840, has been found in Spain. (By a scientist with a name that combines those of the pioneering synth duo, Suicide!) lately. As reported in New Scientist, Daniel Martin-Vega and his colleagues at the University of Alcalá in Madrid found specimens of the fly in traps they’d set for a forensic entomology study focussing on the colonization of carrion.

The fly, also known as a “bone skipper,” is sarcosaprophagous, “that is, it eats and breeds in marrow from crushed bones of large mammals such as deer,” after they’ve been killed and eaten by larger animals, like wolves and bears. Since there are less of these animals around to crush big bones and expose the delicious marrow inside, the flies have gotten very scarce. But, apparently, not completely extinct. So, good!

Here are Martin Rev and Alan Vega performing the classic “Ghost Rider” in the late ‘70s.

“[It’s] a reflection on a social situation, the human experience of giving and receiving parking tickets. I started this process by wondering what would happen in a world where I received them with a set of graceful postures: a clean bend at the waist, a gentle lift of the windshield wiper . . . I’m going to get the ticket either way, my only choice really is how I’m going to receive it.”
-Cambridge, MA, artist-in-residence Daniel Peltz explains the philosophy behind the city’s new parking violations procedures, which include tickets with yoga poses on the envelopes, and “plush, stuffed ‘soft-boots’ to give the ultimate parking penalty a warmer, fuzzier feel.”

“Jane Kwett, a marketer for Yelp who prefers Kerouac to Ginsberg, is the new tenant in Allen Ginsberg’s old apartment. After the landlord raised the rent in her West Village residence, she found the Ginsberg apartment online and thought it looked like a great deal for $1,700 a month.”

The proliferation of celebrity chefs on TV has produced a general tizz around the idea of having people over to dinner, because the constant sight of all that fancy cooking is liable to induce feelings of inadequacy in nearly anyone. But consider that even when suave Euros like, say, Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver are trying to be all chummy and show you how easy everything is, that breezy insouciance is owing to the fact that none of them ever washes a dish, forgets where the grater is, or runs out of wineglasses and/or money. More to the point, if they accidentally incinerate something, they get to do it over again, offscreen, and no one’s the wiser. So I thought I might pass on a few dinner-party-throwing insights, only from a normal person with no cohort of food-styling elves.

The Guest List
There’s one really critical thing to worry about if you want to throw a fun dinner party, and it’s not the food: it’s the guests. Can these people stand each other? For four or five hours? If not, you have to break them up into groups of people who can stand each other, and then throw that many parties. (This is actually two tips in one, as the more dinner parties you throw, the smoother a host you will become.)

Sometimes there’s nothing for it, and you have to have some rumpus. Fractious individuals can be kept from each other’s throats (at least at the table) by means of placecards, which may seem a bit square, but are invaluable. Children like to make them, if there are any of those around; maybe ransom-note style, or with a Dymo labelmaker. Speaking of children, if your guests are bringing any, pen them off somewhere as far away as possible (someone else’s house would be good) with some videos and their own snacks and things, and somebody to keep an eye on them. That will ensure the peace, and also ensure that you won’t appear in their published reminiscences one day. Otherwise, specify grownups only-to everyone, because if you allow one little beast and not another, that is very distressing for the parents of the non-invitee. People with children are terrified about asking whether or not to bring them, so specify at the moment of the invitation.

Apart from the rules of “no enemies” and “no children,” other forms of dinner party segregation, however, are not as fun. It may seem like a good idea to throw together a party of all singles, or all marrieds. This is not the case. Diversity is always more entertaining.

Make Something You Know How To Cook
In order to make your reputation as a good host, you need provide only one or two remarkable dishes. Coulibiac of salmon is a remarkable dish, but then so is homemade bread, and the latter is child’s play, especially that slow-rising Times recipe. Homemade French bread served warm with butter you made yourself (you could mash in a bunch of superfinely-chopped parsley and/or thyme or marjoram, if you want) is so nothing to make, and really you only need a salad, a plain roast chicken and a little dessert to make a really good and memorable dinner. (This is how you make a roast chicken, and 200°C is basically 400°F, by the way.)

The secret of stress-free dinner partying is: don’t attempt anything you haven’t made before, and don’t be afraid to buy really good stuff already made from a restaurant or caterer.

Other simple and exciting things to make at home: this pasta (you need the machine to roll it out, though, or at least I do,) preserved fruit or jam (so good for dessert, with molded cream cheese and plain biscuits, or Cuban style, with saltine crackers,) or ice cream (you don’t need the machine for that, you just stir it really well a few times while it’s freezing).

Some very delicious things like stews and curries and Bolognese sauce are even better made a day ahead. Then you only need to do the rice or pasta on the day, which is a boon. You really don’t need fresh pasta for homemade Bolognese sauce, by the bye. The sturdier dried Italian pasta suits it much better. After you drain the pasta you carefully stir in maybe a third to half of the sauce, making sure it’s mixed in while the pasta is still hot. The rest you ladle on as you serve.

Dessert Is Easy
Go nuts and make a flourless chocolate cake, if you want; it takes only an hour. If you can get really good fruit, dessert is even easier. You can serve chilled, perfectly ripe peaches in wineglasses which you then fill up with champagne or prosecco (a lovely dessert that is ridiculously easy; have bowls, too, and have cream to pour over the peaches, in case someone isn’t drinking, and someone always isn’t drinking, which is why you have this pinot noir grape juice on hand). Or if somehow everyone drinks wine, serve just a little glass of dessert wine, and some sliced crisp pears and toasted walnuts.

If Your Food Is Ugly, People Will Still Eat It
The big thing is to stay calm, so that you can have fun yourself. If you take on a difficult recipe, you will only be all worried about it and not be able to think straight on the day.

Once years ago I made Beef Wellington for a friend’s birthday party with the works, this beautiful truffle butter, a whole filet, I made the puff pastry myself and cut little leaves out of it for the top, and so on. I was recklessly heady with the recent success of a batch of Tournedos Rossini, as I recall. Those are tricky because you have to sear slices of a whole foie gras, which is terrifying. Anyway, when I went to fetch my magnificent-looking leaf-ornamented structure out of the oven, the pastry had exploded in there! I guess it had convected all to heck. A-a-l-l-l-b-b-e-r-r-t, I quavered to my ex, oh God. The filet was now exposed to the elements, and the pastry bunched up around it on either side, like a burst shroud. The guests were busy with hors d’oeuvres and vitriolic gossip so they hadn’t witnessed my parallel collapse, fortunately.

It looks like a vulva, Albert said, and so it did. I carved it in the kitchen, hiding, in the most abject state, and served it in total misery. Surprisingly, it tasted fine (because you can lather a brick with truffle butter and it will taste fine, let alone a fillet steak.) My wretched daughter immediately christened the disaster Beef Poppington, and none of them will ever shut up about it. I have never really recovered from this blow. Now I plan like a freaking general.

Planning: Two Days Out
For optimum serenity, the time to begin throwing your party is at least two days before. (You’ll have made invitations, oh, a week to two weeks previous.) Make sure the seating is all in order and clean, tidy up a bit extra (especially the bathroom guests will use), get all your serving stuff together and do the shopping. Polish glassware and deal with the linens. Or have paper ones, that sort of stuff doesn’t matter; it just matters that everything is really clean and orderly. Make sure that every plate, every dessert dish, all the flatware, every glass, every serving dish, is ready.

The day before, do all the cooking you can, to the last bit-even make salad dressing, down to the littlest things. (There is no need ever to buy salad dressing; vinaigrette or the best dressing ever can be made in one minute and is infinity times better than the bought kind.) Set the table, if possible. If not, set the table in the morning, before you really get cracking; arrange the flowers and put them somewhere the cats won’t get at them. (Also, let the allergic know that you have cats.) Make sure flower arrangements at the table are low enough to see over, unless you mean for them to serve as a screen between those who revile each other. Having these preliminaries out of the way steadies the mind enormously.

It’s worth buying fruit and vegetables at the farmers’ market, if you can manage it. There are still some tomatoes at this time of year! Just cut them up (peel them only if the skins are very heavy) and throw a little olive oil, salt and pepper on them. Salad! And delicious. If you chop the tomatoes rather fine first and chill them for a while after you dress them, they are lovely served on hot, freshly made rice. An unusual French side dish that I stripped down from an old Vogue magazine (they used to have recipes all the time, before they declared war on eating).

Welcoming
The crucial thing about provisions is that they be plentiful and ready to hand. Within one minute of arrival each guest should have a drink and a comfortable place to roost and converse. Within two or three, there should be a snack available, even if it’s just a few olives, crudités and bowls of stuff to dip them in. Nuts can be made more inviting with a brief warming in a hot oven with a little olive oil and maybe a bit of chopped rosemary. Provide for each guest to refresh his own drink-punch is really nice that way-so that you are free to make your last-minute preparations unhindered. Have fresh juice and stuff around for people who aren’t drinking. Make sure there is a water glass for each person and pitchers of iced water available throughout the party. I like to put cucumber slices in there; they are pretty, and it makes the water taste really good. Cocktails are kind of a bother unless you can deputize a bartender, because they have to be made one or two at a time. Beer, wine and punch are far easier to manage.

Serving
The best stuff to serve at a party will still taste good at or near room temperature, or won’t get tired from being kept warm. Cream sauces deteriorate once they’ve cooled even a little, but plain baked chicken can sit for a while and be fine. Oil-based pasta sauces hold up a lot better over the hour or so it takes people to finish eating. You’d think that french fries are so simple, but you really can’t have them at a big party unless you’ve got help in the kitchen, because they go off their peak almost instantly; that’s true of fried things generally. Stews (tagines, curries, daube, etc.) generally will be fine kept over a low flame for ages, just give them a stir now and then.

If you are serving more than six, buffet service is best. Then people can go back for seconds whenever they like. If you have good hors d’oeuvres that can sit for a while, like marinated mushrooms or a Spanish tortilla (even better made with scallions instead of yellow onions-also, this is a perfect light entree for vegetarians), they can stay with the buffet, in case people would like to graze on those a little more. Tidy up the tables, remove stray napkins and glasses once in a while.

Unusual Hostess Gifts
A tricky eventuality that is rarely discussed: if someone brings… let’s say, unusual party favors (at my house, such things are invariably produced and often smoked right before dessert by an agèd hippie), these should be freely shared. This includes cigars and anything else. Those little cabals that form in some corner of your house are depressing to those who haven’t been invited to share; even those who would refuse would like to be asked. So make the perp offer to everyone, if you can. (I have been thinking about laying in my own supply for use in these cases. I wonder how long it keeps in the freezer?) There should also be room for those who don’t indulge to get far, far away. Your local customs may vary. It should be noted that a dinner party does not usually involve the use of hard drugs, unless you are on Fire Island or are a South American drug kingpin. In which cases: you already know how to throw a dinner party.

The Most Important Thing
Finally, make sure you have one hour before guests arrive for self-beautification, and then after you look wonderful, you can sit down for a minute with a book and a drink and completely forget that there are people coming over. Then the doorbell rings, and the fun can begin.

Maria Bustillos is the author of Dorkismo: The Macho of the Dork and

Act Like a Gentleman, Think Like a Woman.

Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, in this case Gillette; advertisers do not produce the content.

Photograph by Cia de Foto, from Flickr.

by Robert Lanham

Last night on “Three’s Company,” there were hijinks. Hijinks, wacky scenarios and sexual innuendo. And, spoiler alert, somebody overheard a conversation while standing outside of a door and misinterpreted it as somebody else having sex. (Well, that happened!) In fact, the whole episode was a comedy of errors.

After months of all of us devoted recappers being stuck watching “Rhoda” reruns and nonstop hostage hysteria-and are we the only ones who think the way Jane Pauley whistles the s’s in Syed Ruhollah Moosavi Khomeini is sexy?-America welcomed the return of its favorite platonic trio: Jack Tripper, Janet Wood and Chrissy Snow. Wait a minute, let me adjust the antenna. That’s not our ditzy Chrissy in terrycloth short-shorts tripping over her own long legs at the Regal Beagle! It’s her klutzy cousin, Cindy!

As reported before, our favorite bleached airhead Suzanne Somers is still having a Chrissy fit over her contract-she thinks her buns are worth $150,000 an episode-which, maybe they are. Still, she’s not exactly as big a star as She-Who-Dons-the-Red-Bikini. I mean come on…. Somers doesn’t even have her own crème rinse conditioner line yet!

Somers initially blamed her absence on a broken rib, a story that was almost as credible Greg Evigan’s latest tall tale-sorry B.J., not even The Bear believes you had to quit The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas because you ate a “bad order of clams casino.”

But back to the recap. Janet and Jack are having a hard time making rent since Chrissy is now living in Fresno. In walks trips cousin Cindy (Jenilee Harrison), an innocent farm girl in piggytails who offers to sublet the room. The dialogue is as sharp as ever, and from the moment we meet her, we know Cindy is every bit as ditzy as her cousin Chrissy:

Jack Tripper: I have two surprises for you two girls.
Cindy: Oh, I love surprises. It’s funny that you never suspect them!

Later, our favorite building manager, Mr. Furley, shows up in a very cool Hawaiian-shirt with pineapples on it. He gets more bug-eyed than Al Jolson at a minstrel show (too soon?) when Jack and his best friend Larry pretend to be queer roller-skating partners. It was a moment of surprising character development.

Doubling the fun, Stanley and Helen Roper — is that a flowered muumuu or a bathrobe, Helen? — return in a cameo, no doubt to remind us of their spin-off “The Ropers.” (When will this spin-off trend end? Before you know it, Larry will have his own show called “Gratuitous Chest Hair.” Or God forbid, Joannie and Chachi will get their own show.)

But we digress. Attempting to show Furley how to fix a broken doorbell, Mr. Roper ascends a ladder propped against a wall in the gang’s apartment. Hilarity ensues.

Helen Roper: I hope you two geniuses can fix the bell. I can’t remember the last time Stanley rung my chimes.
Stanley Roper: Very funny Helen.

While still on the ladder, Stanley calls Jack a “Tinkerbell” and gestures in his direction with a limp wrist. “Can you flap your wings and fly up here,” says the irrepressible joker with his signature smirk. It was hilarious. We haven’t seen much of Jenilee Harrison before, but given those legs she’ll be a shoe-in against Linda Evans in the long jump event on the next “Battle of the Network Stars.”

According to People, Harrison’s credits include a Prell commercial and an episode of “CHiPs” where Ponch pulled over a vanload of cheerleaders from the Oakland Raiders. Replacing Chrissy is clearly a huge break for this lanky Hollywood newcomer. If she’s anywhere near as naïve as the character she plays on the show, we hope someone is looking out for her in Hollywood. We’d hate to see her get mixed up with the wrong crowd, doing poppers and huffing nose candy backstage with Deney Terrio after he tapes “Dance Fever”!

Next week, we have a very tough decision to make since two Richard Chamberlain miniseries, “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds,” will be premiering opposite “Three’s Company” on the two other channels. Decisions, decisions.

Robert Lanham is the author of the beach-towel classic The Emerald Beach Trilogy, which includes the titles Pre-Coitus, Coitus, and Afterglow. More recent works include The Hipster Handbook and The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right. He is the founder and editor of FREEwilliamsburg.com.

“We are not going to Auschwitz this time because I believe it is overrated. The Jews tried to turn Auschwitz and their tragedy into a money-making machine and they persecute historians who ask legitimate questions about what actually happened there.”
-Holocaust denier David Irving shows off his indie cred. Dude should try Treblinka, which was all about the gassing and the cremating and never sold out to The Man.

The genius current trend of slowing down video and audio has reached its logical conclusion in this HORRIFYING DRUG DREAM, from Hot Tropic.

“My greatest fear is that we may not have the resources to properly educate our children. Selling ads on school buses is thinking outside the box and an example of public-private financing that happens to have bi-partisan support.”
–New Jersey copes with its fiscal crisis. I can’t wait until they start using Calvin Klein threesome billboards to illustrate the concept of prime numbers.