The New York Post’s Andrea Peyser takes to the paper today to complain that former governor Eliot Spitzer-”a pathological whoremaster”-may indeed launch a successful return to office. (Spitzer is said to be considering a run for comptroller.) Among the many reasons Peyser provides for Spitzer’s potential rehabilitation: “People wanted to believe that this man, whose financial expertise is, at best, questionable, was tough, strong and smart enough to clean up the economic mess. Besides, Spitzer won’t be asking Ashley Dupre for advice.” Still, if he ever does need such counsel, he knows where to go.

More Molly Ivins news: Kathleen Turner will star in “Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,” a one-woman show premiering in Philadelphia this spring. I could totally see this working.

After being assaulted this weekend by a mentally disturbed man who struck him with a statuette of Milan’s cathedral, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will remain in the hospital until at least Tuesday. The attack on Berlusconi resulted in a fractured nose, two broken teeth, and the complete overshadowing of this amazing story about how the premier “shocked leaders at an EU summit on Friday by sending them doodles showing women’s underwear through the ages.”

This weekend Houston became the largest city in the United States to elect an openly gay mayor. City controller Annise Parker will be inaugurated next month. She has her work cut out for her. Still, congratulations.

Whoever could have punched Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi in the face today, and why? Answer: almost anyone, for thousands of reasons. And how was the rest of today’s rally, Mr. Berlusconi? “The hecklers called Berlusconi a ‘clown’ while he cried ‘shame on you’ back at them and the sound system was turned up to drown them out.” Good stuff.

Spring is the time when even the surliest curmudgeons are lulled by new shoots and flowering buds into a state of shallow optimism. Summer-as certain plants inexplicably thrive while others succumb to heat and rain and pests-delivers a mix of pleasure and disappointment (and Deathâ„¢). Autumn, leaving us now, is about reflection and reconciliation.

Or at least this is how it felt to me over the past few weeks as one by one, I picked up the millions of leaves that had fallen from the white birch and other trees, both in our yard and the neighboring lots. This is a labor-intensive process in a small garden like ours, where rakes or leaf-blowers are not practical unless you want to rip up all of your groundcovers; which in my case, I would rather die.

But there’s a meditative quality to picking up the leaves like this, which, in addition to preparing the garden for winter, allows you to visit each plant and to think about how you have pleased or disappointed each other over the previous months, and how you might improve the relationship next year.

It’s a tending process not unlike what happens in some families, where simply by spending time together after the inevitable battles and hurt feelings, you reach a rapprochement and perhaps even acceptance of each other’s frailties and shortcomings.

It was not difficult to remember how, in July and August, I had grown disillusioned with the failure of the Acer palmatum ‘Elizabeth’ to grow more than a millimeter and threatened (but only in my mind) to rip it out of the ground and hurl it into the vacant lot next door. But now I was consoled and even entranced by its crimson leaves, which, while perhaps not the blazing cloud I’ve seen elsewhere on mature specimens, nevertheless provided a lovely contrast between the evergreen ferns and the weeping blue spruce.

Nor could I claim to still be disappointed with our other Japanese Maple-an Acer palmatum ‘shishigashira’ (aka ‘the shish’)-who after languishing in the background for so many months seemed thrilled to step forward (albeit not without an understandable schadenfreude) and take center-stage after the demise of the painted ferns, which had wilted by mid-October.

I was similarly inclined to forgive our beech tree-a columnar variety, Fagus sylvatica ‘Dawyck Purple’-for turning green during the heavy rains of June, now that its leaves had turned a hypnotic shade of orange.

By the same token, if the trees weren’t filled with overwhelming affection for me, their caretaker, they seemed resigned to living in a tiny, overcrowded garden surrounded by bleak apartment buildings. While perhaps not the future they had imagined as young saplings, when they had dreamed of growing up on lush estates or botanical gardens, they had at least been spared the sad fate of so many of their brethren, who die of loneliness and neglect in the nursery sections of ‘big-box retailers’ such as ____ or _____.

I paused to admire a fall crocus that had pushed through a patch of leaves I had yet to clear from the ground.

The small, delicate flower leaned over to whisper that winter was coming, but that spring would not be so far away.

Previously: In Search of Lost Roses

Matthew Gallaway is a writer who lives in Washington Heights. His first novel, ‘The Metropolis Song,’ will be published in 2010 by Crown.

We all just wanted to thank you for all your support of our benefit calendar. So far, 111 have been sold, which wildly exceeds our expectations. (We were aiming for 60.) One thing: I’m working on a “print-it-at-home explanation sheet thing” for buyers, in case you are giving them as stocking stuffers, so people know what the heck it’s about. And here’s a little more context for you.

Here is the PSA that’s running in North Dakota now, to educate people about housing discrimination.

Age, sex, gender, disability… Oh right. Notable what’s missing, right? Correct. It’s still open season on the gays in the land of liberty.

I don’t know why I care, because I am not 17 to 24 and a lass, but I am pleased as punch with the cancellation of Alexa Chung’s chat-Facebook-faux show on MTV. It was AWFUL. It was clearly garbage from the moment she announced it at the MTV ad-buyer upfronts. The head of programming crowed, “It’s like if MTV and Facebook had a baby”! (To which we responded: “She is just Rocketboom plus Julia Allison plus platform extension, which I guess means there will be like eight girls locked in a room somewhere chatting on Facebook with viewers, sending messages that exhibit all the acumen and emotional connection of Eliza.”) And now, we see the truth about “social networking”-her Twitter and her Facebook have gone all quiet

. For once.

by Dan Kois

Seems like a lot of people are up in arms / delighted / annoyed / enraged by this week’s Top Chef finale, in which hateable [WINNER’S NAME REDACTED, DVR WHINERS*] defeated two dudes to win whatever it is you win when you win Top Chef. (Whoa! $125,000?) If you’re looking for some more cheftastic action, here are a couple of cooking comics that will detonate in your mouth. One’s stately and respectful, like a perfectly-cooked sea bream; the other is ridiculous and over-the-top, like a vegetable-stuffed iootle antler from planet Doofu Prime.

The charming manga Oishinbo, by Testsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, has been a favorite in Japan forever, selling over 100 million copes since its debut in 1983. This year, Viz started publishing English translations, compiling greatest hits from the series’ 102 Japanese-language volumes into seven “a la carte” English collections, each covering a different cuisine: one on fish, one on ramen and gyoza, one on sake, etc. Each follows cynical newspaper gourmand Yamaoka Shiro as he attempts to create the “Ultimate Menu,” a model meal representing the Platonic ideal of Japanese cuisine. Along the way, Shiro gets in constant debates with his hated father, Kaibara Yuzan, head of the Gourmet Club, who thinks his son is a shiftless know-nothing.

Really, it’s all just an excuse for pages-long disquisitions on the qualities and delights of sea bream, nori, and-best of all-rice, in my favorite volume so far, The Joy of Rice. Whether helping a friend’s wife cook the perfect rice to impress her mother-in-law (“In Tabata-san’s case, the rice was too dry and it was milled too much!”) or lecturing a government minister on why rice subsidies are a good idea, Shiro is happy to flaunt his expertise, making for delightfully fussy reading for those of us who find the ritual and rigmarole of Japanese cooking as fun as the flavor.

Recommended for people who like: vegetables, A River Runs Through It; sushi; soap operas; Per Se as a concept even though you can’t actually afford to eat there; “The Minimalist” with Mark Bittman

James Stokoe’s sci-fi trucker cooking comic Wonton Soup, on the other hand, is about as unfussy as it gets. It follows Johnny Boyo, culinary-school drop-out, around the universe as he attempts to, as he says, “hit new flavors that have never been tasted.” (He says this in Volume 1, shortly after wrapping meng-beast steak in electrical wire and frying it in a C-10 Electro-Sponger, typically used by space marines to torture captives.)

The baroque recipes of Wonton Soup (“Chop the nettle-lettuce until it coats the rim of your nostrils”) may be insane, but they express a coherent, specific theory of cuisine: Anything goes in pursuit of pure flavor. (That’s best exhibited in Volume 2, when Johnny Boyo squeezes out a space nymph’s soul, pictured, and bakes it into a cake.) That second volume, published by Oni Press a few months ago, is a little bit of a letdown after the surreal heights of the first, but it’s still packed with great detail, including a subplot involving the Sex Bear, from whose “supple multi-teets springs glorious sex-milk… the most powerful aphrodisiac in the known universe.”

Recommended for people who like: meat; Repo Man; chainsaw-spatulas; the idea of eating a placenta, maybe; Momofuku Ko as a concept even though you’ve never managed to get a table there; “Gluttony” with Mary HK Choi

Previously: Three Comics to Make You Fall in Love with Comics

Dan Kois writes about movies and plays and non-comic books, too. Also, he has a book coming out, about that Hawaiian guy with the ukulele. For the love of God, please consider buying it.

Some more demographic data from the 2008 election: “In states with lower percentages of people that endorse spanking and washing kids’ mouths out with soap, which is the case in New England and much of the Middle Atlantic, Obama did very well. In states with higher percentages, like Wyoming, Idaho, and Alabama, McCain won big.”