Beauty and Brains

I recently posted on the perils (to society) of women attempting to enter masculine fields while I reviewed the charming film The Devil Wears Prada. I wrote about the young female protagonist:

Andy does make it into "real" journalism at the end of the film, securing a position at some New York Post type of newspaper, where she will be writing about social inequalities and other "issues." But she gets to keep her Gucci too. That's the trick: she gets it all! Which is what modern media wants young women to believe: wear your Diors and get that socially responsible degree. She should look pretty while saving the world. If the message is too hard-core, young, socially responsible women, who still want to look pretty if not beautiful, would be running as far away as possible from social consciousness.

Once in a while, a woman enters the masculine sphere of running the world, and she is successful. I think we're seeing that with Michele Bachmann. She has hinted that she will run in the 2016 presidential elections, but in the meantime, she is setting America straight.

Try as political-destroyers might, they cannot find anything to damage her. But, no-one can fault beauty unless its benefactor turns wily. Bachmann is serious, and always looks serious. She is feminine because she is feminine (as in female). And her beauty and her femininity are not some crutch she uses to enter where she pleases. She looks like someone who earns her way.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Columbus Day

Columbus Circle, New York, view from the Time Warner Building


Statue of Christopher Columbus

The monument at the center of Columbus Circle, created by Italian sculptor Gaetano Russo, was erected as part of New York's 1892 commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' landing in the Americas. Constructed with funds raised by Il Progresso, a New York City-based Italian-language newspaper, the monument consists of a marble statue of Columbus atop a 70-foot (21 m) granite rostral column decorated with bronze reliefs representing Columbus' ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. Its pedestal features an angel holding a globe. [Source: Wikipedia]

Close-up of the three ships: Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria




Base of the statue of an angel holding a globe


Aerial view of the Circle, with Central Park


USS Maine National Monument, in front of Central Park

On the northeast lies the Merchant's Gate to Central Park, dominated by the USS Maine National Monument designed by Harold Van Buren Magonigle and sculpted by Attilio Piccirilli, who did the colossal group and figures and Charles Keck, who was responsible for the "In Memoriam" plaque. An imposing Beaux-Arts edifice of marble and gilded bronze, it was built in 1913 as a memorial to sailors killed aboard the battleship USS Maine, whose mysterious 1898 explosion in Havana harbor precipitated the Spanish-American War. [Source: Wikipedia]

Close-up of the gilded bronze figure: Columbia Triumphant

The gilded bronze figures atop the pylon represent Columbia Triumphant leading a seashell chariot of three hippocampi - part horse, part sea-creature and are said to be cast from metal recovered from the guns of the Maine itself. The figures reflect America's new position as a dominant world force just as the imposing Beaux-Arts structure symbolizes America's bold and grandiose domination of territories. [Source: Central Park Conservancy]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Reclaiming our Civilization

Wendi Deng and Rupert Murdoch, about whom I've written here

There are a couple of fascinating reports by an anonymous blogger who calls himself The Educational Realist, who is reporting on "The Asian IQ." I write this in quotation marks, because I myself have posted on the much touted Asian IQ superiority, but have found many loopholes in the measurement to conclude that Asian "high" IQs don't tell us much about Asian intelligence.

In fact, regarding many things about Asians, whites in the US and Canada are having a wide-eyed love affair with Asians (literally and figuratively). But I'm beginning to find out that this indiscriminate wide-eyedness is slowly beginning to squint a little, to have a better view of what' really going on.

Here are the two articles:

College Admissions, Race, and Unintended Consequences

and

Asian Immigrants and What No One Mentions Aloud

Excerpts from the first article:

- In November of 1996, the UC system was told by the people of California that it was not allowed to consider race in admissions anymore.

- Asians, particularly recent immigrant Asians, kill whites on grades. The test score advantage is getting (suspiciously) worse, but the grade advantage is huge.

- So in 1995, 14% of Asians, 5.8% of whites, and .6% of blacks scored over 700 in math, which means that the percentile for 700 was 86%, 94%, and 99%. In 2010 (confirm here), those percentiles were 77%, 94%, and 1%.

Only Asians got a lot smarter? Weird. Not impossible. A lot more Chinese and Koreans are taking the test. Not my pick as an explanation, though.

- [E]ither Asian Americans have gotten phenomenally better, the Chinese/Korean nationals are also getting high Verbal SAT scores, or….what? What explains this jump?

- The reason for this is that Asian students seem to be very good at figuring out the technical requirements of UC [University of California] eligibility.

Excerpts from the second article:

- [F]irst and second generation Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans, as well as nationals from these countries, often fail to embody the sterling academic credentials they include with their applications, and do not live up to the expectations these universities have for top tier students.

- Less delicately put: They cheat.

- Scratch the surface of any cheating story and odds are well above average the school or the class in question is disproportionately Asian.

- Chaos cheating [collaborative cheating]...the testers rush into the room as chaotically as possible, pull chairs close together, sit next to a buddy, whine like crazy when the proctor tries to impose seating order. The proctor sighs, exhorts them not to cheat, and pretty much turns over control of the class to the students. At that point, the kids can quietly discuss answers, text a buddy for help, and basically “collaborate” in any way needed.

- Collaborative cheating also includes splitting up homework assignments and texting answers on in-school tests and quizzes.

- Another cheating scandal that involved both chaos cheating and texting occurred in Orange County, in which students were “allowed to talk, consult study aids, send text messages to friends and leave the room in groups during the exam” [I think by "allowed, the writer doesn't mean it was an official policy of the school, but that no-one stopped the students from those behaviors].

- Prior Knowledge...students are aware of the specific content of the test before taking it. ...Students take advantage of prior knowledge in school by breaking in or in some other way obtaining the tests ahead of time...Notice that none of the schools mention the dominant race of the students involved, but the hints are there and all but one of the example schools are over 40% Asian.

- Then there’s the national high stakes prior knowledge cheating scandals, in which the parties get the actual test information, sometimes from the Korean hagwons who pay testers to take pictures of the test, sometimes from principal whose brother works at a SAT academy that clearly has a large Asian clientele. (Wait–Asian schools in Plano, Texas? No way. Way: 32% Asian. Yeah, surprised me, too.)

- [M]any of the parents, who are recent immigrants, are ruthlessly and endlessly demanding...I know teachers who have quit Asian schools because of the 100 or more emails they get daily, demanding that grades be changed reconsidered.

- The universities look at the resumes of all Asian kids—recent immigrants, long-established natives, nationals—and know that many of them are fraudulent. They know that many of the kids they accept will not be able to function on their campus, whereas others will be able to get great grades so long as they cheat. They know that many of the students don’t have the inquisitive mind, genuine interest in intellectual pursuits that universities like to see in students (or pretend they do). But the universities want the great, if often fraudulent, stats to puff up their numbers for the rankings systems...

- [T]he cheating I describe perpetuates two frauds. The first, of course, benefits the cheaters and their schools at both high school and university level. But the second perpetuates a much larger misconception: People really believe that our top high school students are taking ten-twelve AP courses during their high school year, maintaining 4.5 GPAs, and have the underlying knowledge one would expect from such study. But this almost certainly isn’t true. And once you understand the reality, it’s hard not to wonder about all the “weeding out courses” in organic chemistry and other brutal STEM college courses, the ones that Americans are abandoning in large numbers. The willingness to accept the cheating, to slap it on the wrist if that, is leading to lies that convince a lot of American kids that they aren’t smart enough for tough courses because they don’t cheat and aren’t aware that others are.

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I've written about this on several posts, but I left the threads alone because I had more positive things to do than investigate Asians' inferiorities. I have a book project, and a long-term movement, which I've called Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Civilization

But, I will make a brief commentary on these articles.

1. Every single Asian with whom I have been close friends (or close colleagues) has surprised me with his (actually, it is one male and three female) inferior abilities. Now, this doesn't mean that they were stupid or intellectually incompetent, but that the actual results of their performance wasn't up to par with their initial input. Their abilities are also deceptive, since initially, they start out with high abilities, but this starts to wane with time, and with the complexities of the study or the project.

And in subtle ways, they start to find an easy way out, which is a form of cheating.

For example:

I studied on a PhD level in a program called Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut, performing a clinical sciences project. My project was to analyze vitamin B12 levels in blood to test for early B12 deficiency, and eventually to develop a sensitive test for descerning micro-levels of B12 depletion in the body (not full-blown deficiency). One of the objectives of this project was to establish an early detection method for vitamin B12 depletion in susceptible patients. Another was to test and eventually modify a quick vitamin B12 detection kit, again for clinical purposes.

I was good friends with a Korean student at the time. I had serious reservations about my research, and in fact left my program for six months. My friend, in the mean time, was advising me to just "get it done," like her. She ended up doing a data analysis dissertation, which involved doing correlative analyses of Mexican pre-school children's dietary status. Much of her finding was inconclusive, as in no significant correlations. In order to finish the dissertation, and have it published in a scholarly journal, she tweaked and rearranged her data. She received high praise for her "innovative" data analysis. By her own admission, when she discussed her work with me, she said that the correlations were hard to find. The professors were "in" on her methods, approved them and allowed her to pass. At that time, I was too polite, and too much of a friend, to call her out on it and to tell her that her work was basically a form of cheating. She had already abandoned two "international nutrition" (a euphemism for Third World malnutrition) post-graduate programs, in Tufts and in Columbia. Her father was paying all her way through school, and she had to return with some completed degree. She was also expected to teach at university level (with jobs lined up), and that required a graduate degree.

2. Asians in the public sphere, despite an initial spurt, produce inferior thoughts, designs, research, literature, architecture, and any other kind of endeavor they undertake in Western societies.

I compare Asians to whites. They certainly do have abilities, which does place them in challenging positions. But, their credentials and performance are sub-par to whites, as I discussed above.

- I've written here about Vera Wang, the wedding dress designer, who is now designing fluffy, unstructured, wedding dresses in red and black.

- I discuss here and here the mediocre orchestral musicians of Asian origin.

- I discuss here the inferior intellectual abilities of Asians, abandoning higher level positions for lower level ones once they find their up-graded positions too challenging.

- Here is an article who elaborates on: East Asians, though their average IQ is higher than European Caucasians (105 IQ to 100 IQ), are not as inventive, creative, or as historically accomplished as European Caucasians.

- And here is an article by Steve Sailer comparing cheating by "high ability" Asians and by "high ability" Blacks and Hispanics. He concludes:

Cheating by high ability black and Hispanic students is virtually unknown, both in my own experience and a complete dearth of reported stories.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Inner Beauty with a Lumpy Sweater

Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, in her "lumpy blue sweater"

Oscar de la Renta
Spring, 2007 Ready To Wear Cirulean Dresses

In the back-and-forth world of movies and fashion, it could be that Miranda Priestly's reference to an Oscar de la Renta cirulean gown in The Devil Wears Prada (which did not exist when the movie came out in 2006), could have influenced the designer to produce the cirulean gowns above!

Miranda Priestly, to Andy Sachs:

And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns?

Anna Wintour, after whom Miranda Prieslty is modeled,
in Marc Jacobs, in 2012.
For her, attractive, colorful clothes.
For Vogue, post-modern black and twisted shapes.
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Sometimes a silly film inadvertently tells us some truth. But, I don't really think it is inadvertent as much as how much of the truth can deliberate truth-destroyers destroy. At some point, things clear up and the unadulturated truth pops up.

Such is the case in the pleasant movie The Devil Wears Prada, where a jobless recent graduate of journalism school finally gets an interview with Runway, a fashion magazine.

I wonder why its producers, directors, financiers, film critics, who are 99% liberal and anti-beauty and hence anti-fashion, showed the film in such a warm light? The film is pleasant to watch, and doesn't have any of the bitterness of beauty-haters.

Well, Andy does make it into "real" journalism at the end of the film, securing a position at some New York Post type of newspaper, where she will be writing about social inequalities and other "issues." But she gets to keep her Gucci too. That's the trick: she gets it all! Which is what modern media wants young women to believe: wear your Diors and get that socially responsible degree. She should look pretty while saving the world. If the message is too hard-core, young, socially responsible women, who still want to look pretty if not beautiful, would be running as far away as possible from social consciousness.

But is Andy's "social issues" type of journalism really challenging? Does she really save the world with it? Is she willing to relocate to Somalia for several months to report on the social inequalities there? Or will she simply maneuver her position to stay in beautiful New York, live in a smart downtown apartment, and travel occasionally to Harlem on the A train (the subway line romanticized by Duke Ellington's song) in a more modest Gucci, to write about social inequalities there? And while in Harlem, why not try one of those (safely located) soul food restaurants that are sprouting up all over Harlem for the likes of her: socially conscious whites looking for "safe" places to eat in Harlem?


Take the A Train
(Music by Billy Strayhorn.
With singer Joya Sherrill, who is credited for the lyrics
(she starts singing around the 1:10 point)

Take the A Train

You must take the A train
To go sugar hill 'way up in Harlem
If you miss the A train
You'll find you've missed the quickest way to Harlem

Hurry, get on now it's coming
Listen to those rails a thrumming
All 'board get on the A train
Soon you will be on sugar hill in Harlem

Harlem Renaissance
Women in Sugar Hill, Harlem, ca. 1920
Attributed to James Van Der Zee

Why, New York is the solution. She can have her cake and her soul food - a chef-baked cake from that quaint store in SoHo, and the soulful catfish from the Harlem kitchen - and compose her heart-felt social inequality columns on her laptop, sitting at the desk she recently bought from that antique store in Chelsea.

The antique desk for all those thoughtful articles Andy will be writing

French Bakery in Chelsea, and Southern Cooking in Harlem

But these clever social engineers know that practical lumpy sweaters will start to take over. Who has time to look like a Vogue model, and write that article by a deadline? Other biological determinants will also start to dictate, like young women wanting to be kind and nice unlike that horrifically callous male boss who sees projects as objects and not as people. So try as they might, these social engineers cannot change the essence of girls, and women, so they have to sugar coat their goals in softer language.

Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of Runway, is supposed to be a take on Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. But Priestly is concerned only with the aesthetics of her magazine, whereas Wintour is a social engineer par excellence, where she interlaces the big and heavy Vogue (the October 2013 issue has 380 pages, September's - which I discuss here - 902 pages) with causes and "issues" mostly featuring women (and if men are featured, their wives take up much of the article, as in the article on Rand Paul in the October 2013 issue, where a profile of his wife takes up a chunk of the issue.

In the September 2013 issue there is a profile of Susan Rice titled The Comeback Queen (pp 506-510):

She makes her entrance wearing a scoop-neck blouse, black trousers, and a striking green Ultrasuede jacket accented with circles cut above the hem that she bought at a Smithsonian Craft Show. Her hair is combed back to her shoulders, and a gold watch and bracelet flash on her wrists. She introduces [New York Times's executive editor Jill] Abramson to Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to the U.N., embraces [Mia] Farrow, then spots David Dinkins, the venerable former mayor of New York. She hands him her own champagne flute, says "Cheers," and fist-bumps the glass.

In the October 2013 isse, there is an article on Cori Bergman, who

...has quietly become one of the country's most respected neuroscientists. Now she's leading President Obama's $100 million effort to solve the mysteries of the human brain. [Vogue, September 2013, p179-186]

Even the advertisements have a political angle. A Bulgari advertisement takes up two pages, featuring a necklace of emerald and ruby cabochons on the bare torso of Mrs. Nicolas Sarkozy, who has clearly returned to her modeling roots.

Ex-Madame La Présidente Carla Bruni in a Vogue adverisement

Vogue, under Wintour' stewardship, has gone into an odd amalgam of some beautiful things (mostly in the advertisements), to a "journalistic" type of magazine with interviews and stories on non-fashion subjects somewhat glamorized to fit the magazine. This is a magazine for the serious and fashionable woman.

Wintour, of course when things go too extreme can be ruthlessly Pro Beauty ( or pro decorum, at least). She banned the Hispanic pop star Jennifer Lopez from Vogue photo shoots (calling Lopez "low class") in after Lopez took off with some of the photo shoot clothing. It's o.k. if Lopez shows up as a bare-bodied prostitute, and appears as such in Vogue, but lo the repercussions if she steals items which would have been tossed out anyway.

Anna Wintour, who I think is at the mercy of her staff (everything seems to got through a committee in the life of these multi-million-dollar-generating magazines), and their "research" and "observations" would tell them that women are not into beauty anymore, and thus they should dig out ugliness, and of course politics. But, this is an utterly mistaken observation. Women want beauty as much as ever. It is Vogue, and the post-modern, modernist, anti-beauty elite that is dictating the terms.

But, there is no denying that the elitist Wintour does dress well.

Of course, for the elite, and especially the liberal elite (Wintour is a die-hard liberal and Obama supporter), all these experiments like building a world around ugliness, is for the rest of the world, as they, the elite, live in their gated lives (ideologically and geographically) to keep them immune for the havocs they wreck.

But watching The Devil Wears Prada a second time around, I found it surprisingly non-conventional (as in pursuing beauty seriously, and not in a post-modern, dark and and nihilistic way, but as something worthy of awe and wonder) where where Andy, the typical modern girl who has rejected of beauty, or more precisely picked up the in vogue idea of fashion as rejecting beauty, is beaten down by Runway's Miranda Priestly, and the assistant (played wonderfully by Stanley Tucci, whose played Julia Child's husband in Julie and Julia again with the formidable Meryl Streep) who tries to get this girl in the lumpy blue sweater to wear some couture.

The film is for young women (and older women like Streep who want to "mother" these young women). And young women, as I said above, still want to look pretty and nice. Older women almost always want to mother young women. And, to repeat myself, if this film tried to masculinize or uglify Andy, and demonize Miranda, it would not make it into the box office.

Perhaps "essence" will win over engineering. But so far, these social re-creators seem to have the upper hand.

Below are transcripts of a couple of scenes from The Devil Wears Prada:

Andy Comes for an interview to work in Runway, a fashion magazine run by Miranda Priestly

Miranda: Who are you?

Andy: Uh, my name is Andy Sachs. I recently graduated from Northwestern University.

Miranda: And what are you doing here?

Andy: Well I think I could do a good job as your assistant. And um……Yeah, I came to New York to be a journalist and sent letters out everywhere and finally got a call from Elias-Clarke. And met with Sherry up at Human Resources. Basically it’s this or Auto Universe.

Miranda : So you don’t read Runway ?

Andy : Uh, no.

Miranda : And before today, you had never heard of me.

Andy : No.

Miranda : And you have no style or sense of fashion.

Andy : I think that depends on what you’re-

Miranda : No, no. That wasn’t a question.

Andy: Um, I was editor in chief of the Daily Northwestern. I also, um, won a national competition for College journalists with my series on the Janitors union. Which exposed the exploitation of-

Miranda: That’s all

(Andy turns around to leave, then comes back)

Andy: Yeah. You know, okay. You’re right. I don’t fit in here. I am not skinny or glamorous and I don’t know that much about fashion but I’m smart. I learn fast and I will work very hard.

(Andy waists for a response, then turns around and leaves)

Andy: Thank you for your time.

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Andy spills some food on her sweater while out to buy some take-out with her new collegue Nigel

Andy: Oh. Shoot.

Nigel: Oh, never mind. I'm sure you have plenty more polyblend where that came from.

Andy: Okay. You think my clothes are hideous. I get it. But, you know, I'm not going to be in fashion forever! So I don't see the point of changing everything about myself just because I have this job.

Nigel: Yes, that's true. That's really what this multibillion-dollar industry is all about anyway, isn't it? Inner beauty.

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Andy gets taught a lesson (or two) by Miranda

Miranda: Where are the belts for this dress?­ Why is no one ready?

Assistant: Here. It's a tough call.

Miranda: They're so different. -[Miranda] Hmm.

Andy[Snorts, Chuckles]

Miranda: Something funny?

Andy: No. No, no. Nothing's...You know, it's just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. You know, I'm still learning about this stuff and, uh¡...

Miranda: 'This stuff'? Oh. Okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select... I don't know... that lumpy blue sweater, for instance because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise. It's not lapis. It's actually cerulean. And you're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns? And then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent... wasn't it who showed cerulean military jackets? I think we need a jacket here.

Nigel: Mmm.

Miranda: And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. And then it, uh, filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room from a pile of stuff.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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A Beauty Movement

A Beauty Movement
Read more following the link.

[The current posts are below this, now semi-permanent, post.]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Delmonico's: Rib Eye for $45

Delmonico's Business Men
Lunching on Steak

A reader sent this comment on my post about Delmonico's:

Have you sampled [Delmonico's] wares? Their signature rib-eye is $47 and I guess you pay extra for sides. I'm beyond help - so cheap. I buy a rib eye every week from my local family butcher for 5.98. And then...... I bash it thin and fast fry it. Then........ my wife and I share it!!!

We usually have it with green beans (sometimes Sechuan style) and baked sweet potato.
I am the family cook (most of the time) but full time now as my wife fractured her hip 5 weeks.

Here is Delmonico's recipe for rib-eye steak, posted at an ABC feature on the restaurant:

Delmonico's Rib Eye Steak

Rib Eye Steak

Ingredients:

Six 20-ounce prime rib-eye steaks, at room temperature

Sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Meat Butter (recipe follows)

Method:

Clean, oil, and preheat the grill.

Wipe excess moisture from the exterior of the steaks using a paper towel. Season one side with salt and pepper.

Place the steaks on the hot grill, seasoned side down. Grill for 3 minutes. Season the top side and, using tongs, turn the steaks and grill for 3 minutes to just sear the exterior.

Remove the steaks from the grill and, using a pastry brush, lightly coat both sides of each steak with olive oil.

Return the steaks to the grill and cook, turning occasionally, until the exterior is nicely charred and the interior has reached the desired degree of doneness on an instant-read thermometer.

Remove from the grill and let rest for 5 minutes before serving with a generous pat of Meat Butter.

Meat Butter:

Ingredients:

3 fresh bay leaves

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons sea salt

1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

Method:

Combine the bay leaves, thyme, and salt in a spice grinder and process until powdery.

Place the butter in a mixing bowl. Add the powdered mixture and, using a hand-held electric mixer, blend well.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Delmonico's and Blue Bloods

My favorite New York City Cop Show, Blue Bloods, starring Tom Selleck as my favorite New York City Cop, Frank Reagan the patriarch of the Blue Bloods, started a new season last week, but reruns have been going on for a while. In the 2011 rerun "Dedication" which aired last week, Frank was shot in front of a restaurant where he had finished a meal with some friends. Not to worry, he had a stay in hospital, but he was back to normal, and on to another episode by the end of the show. (I have to admit Selleck in not a particularly good actor - Donny Wahlberg of the "boy band" New Kids on the Block is a surprisingly superior actor despite his hip hop background. He plays Frank's son Danny. But Selleck has a gravitas that requires we take him seriously, and his earnestness, and rough good looks, gives him a high likability factor. We trust and like him as a widowed father of four (grown) children, and as New York City's Police Commissioner).

Delmonico's, the restaurant where Frank was shot, is an actual New York City establishment. The interior looks interesting, with large panel paintings of restaurant patrons covering most of the walls. I tried to find out who painted them. It looks like the artist is an anonymous painter.


Frank Reagan having a meal at Delmonico's with friends

Below are shots of Delmonico's lush interior and walls decorated with panel paintings.















The building has a complicated history: it has been demolished, relocated, rebuilt, and several Delmonico's built around New York. The final incarnation which we see in Blue Bloods is back on Beaver Street.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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