VEGAS

 Danielle, Maxim, and Maxim's new friend

What happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas.  We met up with our kids and grandkid there (Benoit had a DEMA convention to attend), and though I summoned my most imperious scorn for the occasion, it wasn’t half bad.  Since we were last there (23 years ago), big changes – the old, tacky town of run-down ex-luxury hotels has been razed and rebuilt, and the new places – the Bellagio, with its fake Eiffel Tower, Wynn and its new neighbor Encore, Bally’s – are monumental in scale and opulent in amenities.  The people are still pretty tacky, though, especially those poor souls who sit all day in front of slots, endlessly pulling the lever with no hope in their eyes.  We did very little gambling.  The hotel gave us $30 in free chips, just to get us hooked; Nancy put them all on Even at the roulette table; 16 came up; she took her winnings and walked away.

The food was a revelation.  We ate at a Thai restaurant called Lotus of Siam, which we learned about from the Times article heralding the opening of its sister eatery in New York, and it was, as promised, the best Thai food we’d ever encountered – in fact, some of the best food we’d ever encountered.  And Sen of Japan was as good as it gets, too:  wonderful, inventive sushi at a third the price of Nobu.  The reason we went so heavily Asian is that Danielle, living as she does in Honduras, goes without for months at a time, and being pregnant, she has cravings we’re only too happy to satisfy.

And there was a terrific golf course across the street from out hotel, where I played three successive days.  I think the whole city must be economically depressed; resort golf at only $80 a pop is almost unheard of.  So, all in all, one of the best family vacations ever --- even if, unlike our better-connected friends the Patells, we did have to fly coach.

Craftsmanship

My friend Deborah challenged me to revive my blog by posting every day for a month.  I won't be able to do that (we'll be computerless in Vegas  later this week), but le't see how close I can come.

Last night was Nancy's birthday, and we went with the aforementioned Deborah and husband Cyrus to Tom Collichio's much-touted Craft.  Daughter Danielle ate there a couple of years ago and raved.  But it seems Craft has strayed from its original concept -- create-your-own-meals by huddling with someone who functions as a sous-chef -- and now offers, simply, an a la carte menu, which is another way of saying very expensive food.  What's new and different about choosing an app, a main course, and sides?  The short ribs were terrific, but at $38 the portion was a bit skimpy, and needed to be fleshed out with cippolini onions and roast potatoes, each about $11.  Things start to add up, and though the ingredients are top-quality and the preparation faultless, we left feeling a little empty, both in the stomach and wallet departments.  .

"PAUL DICKINSON: NOWHERE TO GO BUT UP" EH STAR, JUNE 17th, 2010

Standing next to the ninth green at Montauk Downs State Park, I squint to make out Paul Dickinson, one of the club’s assistant pros, preparing to tee off a quarter of a mile away. Paul makes an apparently effortless, perfectly balanced swing. I don’t see the ball until it lands in the fairway, almost 300 yards from the tee. When he reaches it, he hits an iron shot so high it appears to have escaped earth’s gravitational field; finally, it decides to land seven feet from the pin. Paul brushes in his birdie putt.

No big deal; he’s been making birdies here most of his life. Golf ran in his family: “When I was a kid, my dad bought me little golf clubs, and I’d hit a whiffle ball around the house,” he says. Born in Montauk to a clan that goes back four generations (his grandparents owned Deep Hollow Ranch and managed Third House), he and his folks moved to Texas when he was eight, but he came back to Montauk every summer.. After playing college golf, he tried to turn pro, but the game didn’t always come easily; at one point, he felt like the marginal golfer who famously said, “I’m not good enough to make it, but I’m too good to quit.” Paul tried other, more conventional jobs, but the pull of golf always brought him back and he was highly motivated by his late brother, stricken by cerebral palsy, who inspired him to make the most of his talent. Now, at 33, he’s playing better than ever. He credits much of his recent success to Michael Hebron -- part swing coach, part sports psychologist – who teaches at Smithtown Landing CC.

Nine holes is all Paul has time for on this day; he’s a busy man. He typically rises at 4 A.M. and puts in some computer time related to become a head club pro – a fallback position in case Plan A (becoming a professional golfer) doesn’t pan out. By 6:30, he’s working on his game at the club, followed by giving lessons from 8 to 4, aand a lunchtime workout with his trainer. After his last lesson, he’ll play some a few holes, have dinner with his wife Nicole and two young sons – “I try to separate my golf from my time with my family,” he says – and he may even go back to the course to practice until it’s too dark. Most nights, he’s in bed by eight o’clock. He has virtually no social life aside from widely-spaced restaurant dinners with Nicole. When does go out, he told me, ruefully, “People I know give me a hard time – ‘You haven’t been around in two years!’”

Nicole is “more than supportive” of this grinding regimen, as is Kevin Smith, head professional at Montauk Downs, who allows Paul a flexible schedule. One great round will get him into this year’s U.S. Open, the second of golf’s four “majors,” to be held at world-famous Pebble Beach. Paul won the local qualifying round at Noyac in Sag Harbor last month, shooting a 67, and there are spots waiting for four to eight of the 120 entrants at the 36-holes-in-one-day sectional qualifier, in New Jersey this month.

But Paul’s long-term goal is to become a member of the PGA Tour itself. He has friends who have made it and are doing well, like Zach Johnson (who won the Colonial Invitation on May 30^th), so he has an idea what the ambience and level of play up there are like. His ultimate ambition, he says, is to win a PGA tour event, not just for the million-plus-dollar purse but because that’s the crowning achievement of any golfer’s career.

Whatever his success in qualifying for the Open, he’ll play several events this summer, and the cost of travel, plus the entry fees, adds up. Since Paul is, in addition to being a prodigy, a patient and talented teacher and one of the most personable guys around, he has a big rooting section at Montauk Downs, and lots of people buy tickets in fund-raising raffle there. Paul’s quest is very special to the Downs community, because it would validate the local golfer community who play at what is, according to Paul, a “spectacular” golf course – long, hard, and in beautiful condition, in a class, says Kevin Smith, with the great local-area private clubs like Atlantic, The Bridge, Maidstone, and National. If Paul Dickinson makes it to Pebble Beach, you’ll hear the cheers all the way from Montauk to the Shinnecock Canal.

DRIVING THE BOAT

How often have I bitched and moaned about Utila, where Danielle lives -- its inaccessibility, its lack of cultural diversions, its removal from the civilized way of life available to children who grow up in New York, as I did and Danielle did. How often have I disapproved of Maxim's lack of access to the museums, the plays, the concerts, the private schools?

On the other hand . . . neither Danielle nor I got to drive the boat when we were three years old.

ARF!

Grading term papers is a chore, but once in a while you come across goodies like this, from the pile sitting on my desk:

“In Sonnet 116, [Shakespeare] ruminates on love that 'is the star to every wandering bark, / Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.' In this instance, the nature of love seems to accept both extremes of the dog. As its tone wavers from violent to doleful, the bark (or the blind groping for love) is not measurable in the traditional sense, but the moon serves as a captive audience that manages to absorb each discrete sentiment that the bark emotes.”

It reminded me of all the other moments like it – the student at Brooklyn College who confused “burrow” with “burro” (I told him he didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground); the other BC undergrad who wrote that “Oedipus fell through his tragic floor” (I think the borough’s accent was to blame), the kid who described himself and his girlfriend as “shits that pass in the night.” There was another student who began a freshman essay with “I was born of poor but Jewish parents,” which is not exactly a blooper, but wonderful in its own way.

"CITY ISLAND"

The other night, I went with my friends Jim and Carol (Nancy was in Florida) to see City Island, which seemed to us the best of a pretty bad selection of movies playing in East Hampton. The summer silly season has begun early this year, and local theaters were showing films like Babies, Iron Man 2 and Furry Vengeance. We settled on City Island despite the lukewarm critical response it engendered. Owen Gleiberman in EW gave City Island a grade of C+, disparaging “the quirky parade of family contrivances that fill out the movie."

We loved it. Those contrivances (which all hinge on family members telling lies about who they are) are what make the movie as much fun as it was. Carol said it was Shakespearean, and she’s absolutely right: the plot hinges on disguises, hidden identities, fantastic lies, and the unexpected consequences of them. Vince, the husband-father, is living a double life: he’s a prison guard but he secretly wants to be an actor, and he’s been taking acting lessons – a shameful activity in his particular cultural milieu – which leads his wife (Juliana Margulies with a Bronx accent, several rungs down the social ladder from her role in “The Good Wife”) to suppose he’s having an affair. In addition, Vince has reconnected with a grown illegitimate son who’s imprisoned where he works and moved him into the family manse, admitting that the kid is a convicted felon but concealing the family relationship. Add to this mix a daughter who’s supposed to be a college student but is really a stripper and a teenage son with a fat-lady fetish, and the lies start to take on lives of their own, all culminating – in the best Shakespearean tradition – in an orgy of truth-telling that almost magically solves every problem and leaves the family not only intact but cleansed by its ordeal. So it’s a very funny comedy with a romantic ending. If I were pitching the film in a story conference, I’d tell the studio heads that it’s The Comedy of Errors meets The Winter’s Tale (and of course they'd turn it down, which is why I'm not in the movie business).

And adding to its charm is the setting. City Island itself is (again in the best Shakespearean manner) a never-never land; despite the fact that it actually exists (Nancy and I years ago used to frequent Sammy’s Fish Box for its excellent clams), it’s an improbable place – a little New England fishing village stuck onto the Bronx. It seems made-up, like Illyria or Prospero’s island, which is why the improbabilities of the story work just fine.

An added benefit: as is not the case with Shakespeare's more outré locales, Jim and Carol and Nancy and I made a date to go there and scarf down some sea food some fine summer night. Nancy's seeing the film this afternoon by herself to bone up for this final exam.

A TALE OF TWO STADII

If only I were writing this post about the Mets' new home, I could have titled it "A Tale of Two Citis" -- but that's life. But to the point: a lot has been written about the new Yankee Stadium (the soullessness, the corporate rapacity), and there's a lot of nostalgia floating around Bomberland for the old place. The other day, Nancy and I took the 4 train to see the team perform on a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and as the train slowed for the 161 St. station, we were somewhat aghast by what looks like Dresden or Nagasaki but is in fact the remains of old homestead.

But look what awaited us only a few hundred yards to the north: how could anyone find fault with this vista, particularly since the myth that no one can afford the seats from which this picture was taken is just that, a myth. We paid a total of $60 for them on Stubhub, and if we hadn't requested e-mail delivery, it would have been $10 less. The fact that the Yanks got routed seemed almost incidental.