Do you remember this poster? You don’t have to be Jewish to like Levy’s rye bread…These posters, using regular people, not models, so witty and so warm, were icons of my youth. So was the Alka-Seltzer commercial, the spicy meat ball one. How many commercials, how many ad campaigns, does one remember with pleasure and admiration 40 years later? How many does one remember at all, come to think of it? And then there was Private Benjamin, one of the funniest movies ever made…The same man is responsible for all those things: Howad Zieff. It’s mind-boggling. Here he is with his also awesome wife, Ronda Gomez, in New York two weeks ago, where he won a Lucie Award.

Here is one of his Daily News ads:

Now, that’s a spicy meatball.

I just got home from an evening at Zampa, a new wine bar on 13th Street and 8th that my friends Danny Emerman and Sandro Prosperi have opened. To quote Maggie Smith in Gosford Park, “Yummy!” I wish I lived close enough to have lunch there every day and go back for wine and octopus every evening. Zampa means hoof in Italian. I thought there would be pigs trotters for dinner. But there was tuna and there were white beans and there were beets. Not a cloven hoof in sight.

Thanks to Onegoodbumblebee, one of my favorite sites, I have discovered the best, most satisfying procrastination tool yet–sketchfu! It’s like an online etch-a-sketch in color. Some of the artists are really good. Some are funny. Some, like the one above, are just fun. And you can playback their (or your own) drawing, so that it’s like watching an animated film. Like those Woody Woodpecker cartoons where you would see the hand actually drawing Woody. Woody Woodpecker was a real pain in the ass, wasn’t he? I guess he still is. But I like him.


I like woodpeckers in general. First, they are big and clearly marked and easy to identify. Second, their little brains have internal helmets so they don’t get rattled and end up punch drunk like poor Mohammed Ali. I love Mohammed Ali. I met him at some gala dinner somewhere. It was thrilling. He was very polite and warm. People were so excited they were having trouble breathing.

What can I say? Sometimes I surf around looking for pictures of cairn terriers. Here is Wallis Simpson with her cairn, Slipper.