The Minor Fall, The Major Lift

I first fell in love with Leonard Cohen when I was 12 or so and plucked a copy of his poetry collection The Spice Box of Earth from my parents' bookshelf. I was trying to understand how grownups thought about love and sex, and when I read the wondrous, wondering "You Have The Lovers," I thought perhaps he was closer to the answer than I was.

After seeing him play the magnificently restored Beacon Theatre over a week ago, that's apparently still true. Wearing a narrow black suit and a matching fedora and in fine voice, he played for three hours (including an intermission and three encores, 27 songs in all); he skipped on and off the stage; and he thanked everyone involved with the production, by name.

And the music? He started with "Dance Me to the End of Love," and he and the 10 performers on the stage played all my favorites. The arrangements, especially the backup vocals featuring Sharon Robinson and The Webb Sisters, were stunning. I have been privileged to see many wonderful shows in my lifetime, but this was one of the best.

He's 74 now, and thoughtful, and productive, and Jewish and Buddhist, and gives great interviews, and I still have a lot to learn from him.

You can hear some of the show for yourself at NPR.org.

How Gold Were My Oscars

I am catching up with posts from an insanely busy ten days, but thought I'd start with my annual Oscar party. The show? It was like its host Hugh Jackman: good-looking, hard-working and trying just a little too hard. Also, ombré must die.

The assembled multitudes here dressed up and had a great time, and as in the past, the menu was inspired by the nominees:

Champagne and Sparkling Wine
in honor of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

International Sparkling Waters
in honor of the Foreign Language Film nominees

Vegetable Samosas
in honor of Slumdog Millionaire

Cottage Cheese and Ketchup à la Milhous
in honor of Frost/Nixon

Tender Green Salad
in honor of Wall-E

Sourdough Bread and Creamery Butter
in honor of Milk

New Orleans Red Beans and Rice (vegan)
in honor of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Zuni Café Roast Chicken
in honor of Milk

New Jersey Potato Salad
in honor of The Wrestler

German Chocolate Cake mit Schlag
in honor of The Reader

Spiced Chai
in honor of Slumdog Millionaire

There were no real surprises, except for Anne Hathaway's delightful singing voice and Jessica Biel's wince-inducing dress:

All Or Nothing At All

In a weird coincidence, it turns out that the fertility doctor responsible for Nadya Suleman's 14 children, including the newborn octuplets, is also the specialist I visited when, after the loss of Lily, my ex and I decided to give pregnancy one last try.

Stories about Dr. Michael Kamrava also showed that his fertility success rate (i.e., ratio of procedures to live births) was one of the worst in the country.

I just thought it was me, not unreasonable given my lack of previous "success," the glowing letters from happy parents and photos of adorable infants posted around his office and the strong recommendation from my OB-GYN. Not to mention how much I hated the whole dispiriting process: the daily hormone shots made me cry, and I thought that maybe I just didn't want motherhood enough to make it happen.

But now I wonder, given his apparent penchant for implanting multiple embryos (contradicting accepted "assisted reproductive technology" procedure), if the sad shake of his head when he told me that I just didn't have enough eggs to keep going actually only meant that I didn't have enough to keep going with him.

Because you can't make an omelet without breaking them.

Playing Dress-Up

Thanks in part to a much-appreciated gift card, I had a lovely dinner at Gramercy Tavern last night. The seven-course winter tasting menu, which offered many delights, including a delicious bit of roast veal topped with a small rectangle of braised deckle, recognizable in less refined surroundings as the fatty part of the brisket.

My companion was one of the few men there wearing a suit and tie, and I had pulled a form-fitting, square-necked stretch-wool Dolce & Gabbana dress from my collection of classic black dinner dresses, which I wore with a favorite pair of black calfskin Manolo Blahnik pumps with four-inch heels, a cherry-red Chanel lipstick from their sadly now discontinued Infrarouge line and a Frank Gehry bangle.

Afterwards, we went to see L'Image, a jazzy quintet comprising some of the world's best studio musicians, at Iridium, and I think I may have been the only woman there in a dress.

Obviously, I love to dress up. It's my surest route to feeling glamorous and grownup, and my icons are the great stars of the 1950s. Though sometimes it all seems too much, especially in a dressed-down world, I generally think I pull it off. And I wonder why more people don't seem to try. Maybe they're not interested; maybe they don't know how.

Because when I've done it right, nothing beats the feeling of looking in the mirror and thinking, correctly or not, that I look like this:

(Elizabeth Taylor, c. 1957.)

Old Dog Up To Old Tricks

Cassie, my eight-year-old Chesapeake Bay retriever, and I were both pleased to see that Stump, a ten-year-old Sussex spaniel, won the Westminster dog show last night. Both she and I are retired show dogs (in this context the term "bitch" is entirely appropriate), which Stump was for a few years, and his handler did little to prepare him for the event.

It's the equivalent of me deciding to compete in this year's Miss America pageant - not that I'd want to (I hate the taste of smile-enhancing Vaseline) nor that I could (their current age cutoff is 24). But it's nice to know that, though dog shows are absurd (just like Best in Show) and a playground for scary eugenics, at least they don't discriminate on the basis of age.

One of Cassie's seven-year-old cousins won Best of Breed. Here she is (fourth from front) at Westminster, handled by Cassie's vet and breeder:

(Photo from The New York Times' Westminster slideshow.)

I Saw Them Standing There

I was at the official New York Grammys party last night at the Hard Rock Cafe, which I last visited for a lavish bar mitzvah. This was much the same, including a sing-along led by everyone's favorite Brooklyn-born zayde, Neil Diamond. The food at the bar mitzvah was better.

A few observations:

• Seeing Paul McCartney sing "I Saw Her Standing There" is the closest I'll probably ever get to having see him at Shea Stadium, which my babysitter went to. How did John Mayer not even acknowledge that he beat a Beatle in the Male Pop Vocal category?
• Speaking of which, I would so much rather have seen just B.B. King and Albert King in the Bo Diddley tribute than Mayer and Keith Urban, whose additions were pointless.
• I liked the Plant/Krauss record, but Radiohead probably should have won Album of the Year. It's actually amazing that they were nominated by the hidebound Academy, given that they clearly demonstrated that giving music away free can be a sound business strategy.
• Radiohead's performance with the USC Marching Band was amazing. How euphoric must those kids have been?
• How many moms-to-be will be waddling into A Pea in the Pod today asking for a black-and-white outfit just like M.I.A.'s? She can swagga with the boys anytime.
• Carrie Underwood's blonde guitarist was Orianthi. You're welcome.
• Jonas Brothers: Sorta cute. Forgettable. Stevie Wonder is a saint.
• Katy Perry can't sing. She certainly can't dance, so what was the point of wearing flats? Heels would have been so much better. And while it's possible that she did kiss a girl, I think she was faking when she said she liked it. Newsflash for Craig Ferguson: She's not actually a lesbian.
• I understand that the average CBS viewer is somewhere around 62. But there was a high level of geezerness in this broadcast. And as much as I adore Smokey Robinson and am always happy to hear a Four Tops song, Ne-Yo was the best part of that number.
• Adele looked lovely. It turns out that Anna Wintour styled her.

Didn't see the commercials. Any good ones?

Bettie Can Haz Cramps

Lux Interior, creator along with his wife Poison Ivy of punk-psychobilly band The Cramps, has died.

I saw them play many times. They were loud and dark and funny and visual - Lux pale and gaunt, often stripped to the waist and occasionally wearing heels, Ivy stone-faced, in a cloud of red curls and a corselette. I loved their song "Human Fly" and have a clear physical memory of dancing to it at the Mudd Club. Now I'm crying 96 tears out of 96 eyes.

Only their music is in this video featuring Bettie Page and a playmate (and though there is no nudity it's definitely NSFW) - but appreciation for Bettie and retro bondage culture was a big part of who The Cramps were.

The Great Pretenders

Last Friday, I headed to Roseland to see The Pretenders. I've always admired the tough-but-vulnerable Chrissie Hynde as a protofeminist icon, and we used to travel in some of the same circles. I love the songs - the rockers like "Tattooed Love Boys" more than the ballads. And I once promoted a now-legendary show at Roseland.

So, wearing leather pants and a New York Dolls shirt, I was primed for the evening. And then I got there, and realized that the average age of the audience was 50. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the absence of faces under 40 who weren't the children or bemused dates of other concertgoers made me feel like just another old person trying to capture a reminder of my vanished youth.

The show was just fine - Hynde looked great and was in excellent voice. But as I cursed those around me who sang along loudly and tunelessly to every hit - I came to hear her, not her fans, and have never understood why proving you know the lyrics is considered a fitting tribute - I realized that each one of them also felt that they had a special connection to her. Maybe they remembered the first time they saw the "Brass in Pocket" video on MTV, or maybe "I'll Stand By You" was played at their prom.

So my memory of her and Ray Davies in a drunken argument at the bar at the Peppermint Lounge wasn't necessarily anything all that special. But, like most of the memories set down here, it was mine. And the advantage (and disadvantage) of being an old person is that I have a lot of them.

My Huckleberry Friend Is A Banquet

I am so fickle. In just three days, I've gone from having a crush on Stephen Colbert to having a crush on a blog, namely Walking Off The Big Apple, which offers guides to carefully researched walks around my hometown with a literary sensibility and a nice eye for detail.

The author, Teri Tynes, has created such delightful prospects as a walk inspired by Holly Golightly's favorite haunts and another devoted to the perambulations of the magnificent Auntie Mame. And she is, apparently, the chair of the New York branch of La Société des Flâneurs Sans Frontières, a haven for "Anarcho-Absurdists, Revolutionary Sybarites, Alchemical Hazardistas and Urban Arcadians everywhere." Who are certainly my kind of people.

I am grateful to the Times's City Room for pointing me thence, and hope she gets the attention she deserves from those of us who are not tourists.

Life, after all, is a banquet, as Mame Dennis liked to say. And we must ensure that we don't starve to death; even overlooking the park in the world's most magnificent city, there's a difference between living and Life.

(The Flâneur's duelling card.)