funny, funny world

Although he tears up when he sees clips of his comedy sketches, Stanley Kaufman admits that his son, Andy Kaufman, was difficult to handle growing up. He ran away from home. He didn’t do well in school. His hair was “down to his hips.”

But one day, he gave his father a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. “That moment was my awakening as to who Andy was and what he was trying to say,” Kaufman said Tuesday night at Caroline’s Comedy Club midtown Manhattan, where amateur comedian Blaine Kneece received the fifth annual Andy Kaufman Award and $2,500.

The competition—named for the New York-born comedian, who died 25 years ago—featured six finalists, each given eight minutes to woo the judges. But a few acts were interrupted by the show’s chain-smoking emcee, Tony Clifton, who was eventually asked to leave. A lounge-singing character created by Kaufman and known for outrageous outbursts, Clifton was often played by other people even when Kaufman was alive.

Some audience members questioned whether the scene, which included a shouting match and the emptying of a glass, was scripted.

But Kaufman’s daughter, Maria Colonna, compared her father’s work to that of Sacha Baron Cohen, another actor known for bringing controversial characters to life.

She said her father would be honored to know there’s a comedy award in his name. “But at the same time,” she said, “I’m sure he’d play some little trick on us.”

Al Parinello, executive director of The Andy Kaufman Award ceremony, was a good friend to the comedian. In college, Parinello paid Kaufman $5 to perform in a coffee house. Like most of Kaufman’s work that followed, the performance shocked the audience. But as alternative comedy has taken center stage, work like Kaufman’s—known to make audiences uncomfortable—has gained in popularity. Every week, 125,000 YouTube viewers request an Andy Kaufman video, Parinello said.

Parinello and Kaufman’s brother, Michael Kaufman, spent two months pouring over 100 videos submitted by amateur comedians from 15 states. They narrowed their selection to 25 contestants, who performed Monday night. Six were chosen for Tuesday’s finale, where judges included Flight of the Conchords actress and Kaufman Award winner Kristen Schaal; Kaufman’s manager, George Shapiro; and Michael Kaufman.

“We look for people who will take risks—unprecedented risks in some cases,” Parinello said, giving a nod to comics who incorporate costumes and technology into their performance. Tuesday’s winner, Kneece, used iPods and video. Another finalist, Eric Davis, wore a red, spandex jumpsuit filled with inflated objects.

Before the comedians performed, the audience watched a video featuring some of Kaufman’s more memorable moments: among them, a conga drum skit, an Elvis impersonation and his curse-laden appearance on the David Letterman Show.

“Looking at this video, I’m even amazed at how much Andy created in the short time he was with us,” said Michael Kaufman. “It’s given people freedom to do things they might not have otherwise done.”

George Shapiro, Kaufman’s manager and a producer of the award-winning television series Seinfeld, said the first time he saw him perform, the audience seemed uncomfortable.

“He’s the most original—not only performer, but I think the most original person I ever met in my life,” Shapiro said. “My only concern was, as a manager, am I dealing with someone totally insane?”

After the finalists performed, Carol Kaufman-Kerman introduced a song her brother performed at the end of many skits: Friendly, Friendly World. Her brother’s routines were out-of-the-box, she said—but at the end, he usually tied the knots.

“No matter how far he brought you,” she said with a smile, “he always brought you back to that safe place at the end.”

in yankee territory, phillies fans hold strong

Phillies fan Sonny Forriest, Jr. performs a pro-Phillies anthem outside Yankee Stadium in the Bronx Wednesday night.

In 1950, Victor Maggitti was a senior with perfect attendance at his West Philadelphia high school. Every Sunday, he went to the city’s Shibe Park to catch a ball game. When the Philadelphia Phillies made it to the World Series that year, Maggitti, a diehard Phillies fan, sent for tickets.

“To get to the World Series, believe it or not, all you had to do was write to the newspaper,” he said. But when the tickets arrived, his mom wouldn’t let him skip school for the game.

“Now, 60 years later, I’m going to every game to make up for it,” the Philadelphia resident said outside Yankee Stadium Wednesday night. Maggiti and his fiancée, a Manhattan-based New York Yankees fan, were there to watch Game One of the Major League Baseball World Series—the first since 1950 to bring the Yankees and the Phillies head-to-head.

“We got tickets for the first two games here and I have a suite at the Phillies,” Maggitti said, adding he also saw his team play in 2008 against the Tampa Bay Rays. “When they come to Philadelphia we’re going to wipe them out. Philadelphia fans are more loud—and we are rough.”

But in the Bronx before Wednesday’s game, most Phillies fans—their red gear splattered in a sea of blue pinstripes—were confident in Yankee territory. And after nine innings, the Phillies took the Yankees 6-1.

Dan Chervanick, who lives in New York but grew up in Philadelphia, called the Yankees-Phillies relationship “playful.”

“Nothing bad,” he said of Yankees fans before the game. “They were telling us to get off at the wrong subway stop.”

Dave Schwind, who traveled to New York from Philadelphia, got a ticket from a Yankees-loving friend.

“We hate each other to begin with, so this is just adding to it,” he joked. “I have to be kind of nice because he got the tickets.”

And Julie Develin, who grew up cheering for the Phillies in Pennsylvania, went to the game with her best friend, another Yankees supporter.

“The Yankee fans have been nice to me so far,” said Develin, who also has tickets for Saturday’s game in Philadelphia. “I was booed on the subway and that’s it.”

But she said she made sure to avoid the rain-soaked Yankees pep rally hosted by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in Times Square Wednesday afternoon.

Phillies fans also steered clear of CupcakeStop, a roaming cupcake vendor parked at 47th Street and Third Avenue on Wednesday. As he handed out “A. Rod” cupcakes, Rob Fessenden said the truck sold 300 New York Yankees cupcakes by 1 p.m.

“The Yankee ones are going real fast today,” Fessenden said, adding no Phillies fans requested cupcakes.

But Phillies support was cooking a few blocks away, where Evan Stein prepared some Philadelphia-inspired treats at Shorty’s, his 42nd Street bar. Beginning at 4 p.m., Shorty’s staff served between 500 and 750 free Philly cheesesteaks as part of a promotion sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp.

“You just can’t duplicate Philly bread,” Stein said, adding the Zagat Survey, which rates New York restaurants, recently called the bar’s cheesesteaks the city’s best.

Shorty’s Manager Dan Sullivan, a staunch Yankees fan, admitted his love for cheesesteaks. Still, he didn’t plan to hide his Yankee pride.

“I will definitely be extra boisterous if the Yankees win,” said Sullivan, who was clad in Yankees pinstripes. “I have an easy exit.”

Back at Yankee Stadium, Phillies fan Sonny Forriest, Jr. prepared to listen to the game from outside as the pre-game ceremonies began. Although Forriest came to New York sporting a white Phillies jacket and a red ball cap, he and his friends didn’t have tickets.

“They say if you buy one from a scalper, you get locked up,” said Forriest, a handicapped veteran. “We’re just going to sit around and listen like everybody else.”

While ticket-holders trickled inside the stadium and those without gathered outside in Babe Ruth Plaza, Forriest pulled out a microphone and performed a pro-Phillies anthem.

“Love is just like a baseball game—three strikes you’re out,” he crooned as a pair of Yankees fans nearby shook their heads. “We’re gonna win the World Series.”

paris, je t’aime. new york, try again.

Paris, Je T’aime was fabulous. Although some of the vignettes weren’t cinematic masterpieces, they showed the city through different lenses. They gave a place that tends to be romanticized a real-life quality. Tour d’Eiffel? Oui, but Paris has a lot more to offer.

New York, I Love You, on the other hand, fails. With fewer – 11, rather than 20 – vignettes, it is a lacking depiction of an equally fabulous city.

Walking home from the theater, my roommate and I tried to get a table for some hot chocolate at Serendipity, an Upper East Side restaurant made famous by the film of the same name. New York is full of such spots, probably because it’s a place that makes filmmakers salivate. Do I even need to list the places that have shown up on film here?

The problem with NYC’s A-list personality, its tendency to steal the show, is that it has turned into a cinematic version of itself. People line up for “one hour plus” just to have a cup of hot chocolate where Keanu Reeves did the same. (We didn’t, and saved $8.50.) They stroll by the Tiffany’s window, not quite as gracefully as Audrey did, but playing her part as best they can. New York, I Love You is a film about this oh-so-filmable place. It showcases the New York that movie producers have created, rather than the New York that actually is. (This is particularly evident at the end of the film, which uses one of the story lines – a woman who films everything she sees – to tie all of the scenes together, hastily.)

I haven’t lived here long, but I know there’s more to the city than what we see in New York, I Love You. Yes, there’s a shot of Coney Island. Sure, Chinatown makes the cut. I suppose Natalie Portman sits on a bench in Brooklyn, albeit looking across the water at Manhattan. But where is the rest of the city? This is perhaps one of the things that gave Paris je t’aime its chops: it was set in 20 different arrondissements, forcing the directors to provide a broader view.

Another problem with New York, I Love You is its characters. Where are people who don’t look like they belong in movies? The film itself is beautiful, but considering the diversity of the filmmakers involved in the project, it’s a flattened look at a multi-dimensional place.

Portraits are nice, but New York deserves to be sculpted.

the accidental supper club

A neighborhood known for its culinary aptitude, Astoria’s main thoroughfares are lined with restaurants and cafes. But it’s also home to a less visible dining experience. Two or three times, a month, Tamara Reynolds and Zora O’Neill run what some would call an underground supper club, serving dinner to groups of strangers.

It’s a concept at which many New Yorkers would recoil: opening the door to hungry people armed with wine. But it’s something the two have been doing since 2003, when they were some of the first in the city to do it. Reynolds and O’Neill met working together at a restaurant and began cooking dinner together on Sundays, when HBO’s programming was best.

“All the sudden everyone wanted to come and people wanted to invite their friends,” Reynolds said. Eventually, the two started asking for $15 donations, turning a casual pastime into a more organized affair: The Sunday Night Dinner in Astoria.

“That just opened the floodgates,” said Reynolds, a caterer, freelance writer and author. “First of all, everybody gave $20. But it also made people feel like they were no longer worrying that they were trotting on our hospitality.”

Taking various shapes, underground supper clubs have been popular in major cities worldwide for the past few years. In Cuba, family-owned paladares have been around for much, much longer.

When Reynolds and O’Neill started out, Sunday Night Dinner was one of just two known supper clubs in New York City. The other, The Ghetto Gourmet, began on the West Coast.

“It was so different the first time somebody came who we didn’t know,” Reynolds said as she described the rise of the project. “We’re like the accidental supper club.”

Invites are typically word-of-mouth. When Reynolds read a WNYC essay about her Fourth of July tradition—every year, she makes fried chicken and reads the Declaration of Independence—traffic went up. When she did an interview on the Brian Lehrer show with two other women running supper clubs, she got 400 e-mails.

“It’s not an exclusive thing—we’re not like, ‘Oh, are you cool enough to come to dinner?’” she said. Dinners, which are limited to 20 people, usually sell out within 15 to 45 minutes. The menu is preset, and those with food allergies and picky taste might as well leave them at the door.

“I have the distinct pleasure of getting to cook what I feel like cooking, and most often it’s something that I’ve never cooked before,” Reynolds said, adding menus are usually guided by season. The chefs use local products, from deer provided by their friend “John the Hunter” to tomatoes, chard, green beans and herbs Reynolds grows in her Astoria backyard.

In September, they hosted a party with guests seated by candlelight around an L-shaped table. The evening’s menu included fried green tomatoes, dandy green salad with candied bacon, crack ham—glazed with bourbon, Dijon, brown sugar, orange juice and molasses—tomato, bread and butter casserole and zucchini. Diners, many strangers to each other, brought their own wine and chatted with each other as the hosts made their way around the kitchen.

Reynolds said she has never been to another New York City supper club. Many of them are, in her opinion, “very velvet ropey.”

But O’Neill ran her own for about nine months after 9/11, inspired by someone she met in Amsterdam. She said although the feedback and experience were helpful, she ended up losing money on the four-course meals paired with wine, for which she charged between $35 and $50.

These days, the Sunday Night dinners cost $35. But despite their popularity, the chefs don’t bring in much, O’Neill said—maybe $40 each. Much of their success is coming in other forms. This fall, they made international tummies growl when they were asked to host a party for Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s American Roadtrip, which aired in the U.K. in September. (A rainy day forced them to rework their menu the morning of the shoot. “It was hilarious, but it worked out fine,” Reynolds said.)

The two also released their first cookbook this fall, a project they’ve been working on for a couple of years. Forking Fanstastic, which came out last week, features recipes the two have prepared for their dinner parties over the years.

“Our hope is that the cookbook will inspire more people to cook,” O’Neill said. “It is a special thing that a lot of people don’t get enough of.”

ain’t no party like a 1920s lawn party

Half a mile from Manhattan, jazz music trumpeted  through the air Sunday afternoon at a Fitzgerald-inspired lawn party. I have no idea how so many people came up with such stylish 1920s outfits, or why people don’t do this more often.

But even without the pie competitions and tug o’ wars of Sunday, Governors Island – where the event took place – is a fabulous spot to visit.

midtown zombies

The living dead were all dolled up last night as zombie aficionados – and zombie stylists – took over The Mean Fiddler, a pub on 47th Street and 8th Avenue. The reason?

Supposedly, they were going to see Zombieland – but I have a feeling some of the zombified had done the zombie thing before.

a call for human rights

Written Wednesday. Posted here far too late. C’est la vie?

Green balloons and Farsi chants filled the streets Wednesday as thousands of protestors gathered to oppose Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to the United Nations.

Just blocks from the United Nations Plaza, organizers from the New York chapter of advocacy group Where is My Vote began setting up early Wednesday morning. The international group formed in Iran shortly after the contested June election, when Ahmadinejad won over opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi due to what many suspected was a corrupt electoral process. In the weeks that followed, a series of peaceful protests in Iran lead to violence.

Where Is My Vote, which called its protest “Voices for Iran: No to Ahmadinejad, Yes to Human Rights,” plans to ask the UN to appoint a commission to investigate human rights abuses that occurred in the election’s aftermath. Spokesperson Navid Hazeghi said the group has been working with international advocacy group Human Rights Watch to draft a request for UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.

“Basically we want to raise awareness on the human rights issue in Iran,” Hazeghi said. “Raise awareness, educate and have the people of Iran know that outside of Iran, the Iranian diaspora is behind them.”

He said organizers expect between 10,000 and 15,000 protestors to rally leading up to Ahmadinejad’s speech to the General Assembly, scheduled for 5 p.m.

On Thursday, Where Is My Vote will march with a mile-long scroll across the Brooklyn Bridge. The scroll, which was put together in Paris using pieces of green clothing, includes 20,000 signatures from Iranians worldwide.

NYU student Maral Satari collected more than 500 signatures for the scroll this summer at home in Torrance, California. Satari, who moved there from Iran when she was 10, said she planned to protest in New York as soon as she heard Ahmadinejad would be in town.

“I’m just so amazed that he even has the nerve to come here,” she said, adding she wasn’t sure what effect the protests would have. “I actually hope it brings about some actual change.”

For many of the green-clad protesters who gathered at the corner of Third Avenue and 40th Street, the rally was a chance to show those in Iran they haven’t been forgotten. Volunteers sold t-shirts and pins to protestors carrying signs that emphasized women’s rights, freedom and opposition to Ahmadinejad. Some wore costumes – a grim reaper posed for photos– and many had green fabric tied to their wrists.

According to an article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, thousands of exiled Iranians planned to travel to New York from across the U.S. and Canada for Wednesday’s protests. On its website, Where Is My Vote’s New York chapter offered chartered buses from D.C.

When California resident Masi Hashemjan heard the Iranian president would speak in New York, she booked a plane ticket right away.

”I really hope that the UN members get up and leaves when he talks,” she said of Ahmadinejad’s speech. According to a Tuesday report from Toronto’s National Post, delegates from Canada plan to boycott the speech.

“If Ahmadinejad is planning to show up, I’ll be here—even if he doesn’t hear me,” Hashemian said as protestors chanted in Farsi. In English, one popular cheer – “Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Ahmadinejad has to go” – rang through the crowd.

Among the crowds of exiled Iranian, some non-Iranians, like Joanne Elmore, showed their support.

“I am totally appalled by what’s happening in Iran,” said the Ohio resident, who heard about this week’s events on Twitter.

Mehdi Karimi, who lives in Berkeley, California, flew to New York Tuesday night. He has protested in support of Iranians for 27 years.

“This is to show our solidarity for the Iranian people, showing that we can get together and demonstrate,” he said. In Berkeley, he’s a member of a group called NorCal for Iran, which sent many of its members to New York.

Mahim Sonati, another Iranian-Californian, shook her head as she considered their decision to come to New York.

“Just, to show that there are some people that would really like to say their words,” she said. “This is not our president. Neither the people of Iran have chosen him, or the people out of Iran.”

duds and diaries

This is a terrible photo. One day, I'll fix it.

My first off-Broadway experience, Monday evening: Love, Loss, and What I Wore.

Written by Nora Ephron – of recent Julie&Julia fame – and her daughter Delia Ephron, it has been described as Vagina Monologues without the vaginas. Although it’s a fairly accurate description, there’s a little more to it than that. And while the thrust of the two plays is similar – women speak directly to the audience from a very minimalist set – the Ephrons deserve more kudos than that.

The play, clearly written for New York – both as it is today and as it once was – revolves around clothing. Shoes, purses, boots, sweaters, prom dresses, bathrobes … 27 vignettes about clothes. But this is no Devil Wears Prada. Why is it that a fuzzy bathrobe can call up childhood memories? How can a pair of boots allow someone to move beyond a life-changing experience? What is it about clothing – or, at the extreme end of a spectrum, fashion – that makes us remember?

A few particularly snazzy items stick out in my memory, when I think back: a brown suede pair of “heels” I got in sixth grade and a dress my Mom made me to wear to see the Nutcracker at some point, among others.

Samantha Bee, Tyne Daly, Katie Finneran, Natasha Lyonne and Rosie O’Donnell are the first five women to do the show. A rotating cast of fairly big names will follow in upcoming weeks. Monday was the first night of previews, which might explain why the actors had scripts onstage. (Theatre gurus, help me out. Is this what ‘preview’ means?)

I do know what off-Broadway means. The theatre, Westside Theatre on W 43rd Street, is a tiny, former Baptist church. And when I say tiny, I mean Guelph Little Theatre tiny. The building actually holds two stages, one on each floor, which creates awkward floor-stomping interruptions downstairs. (At one point it sounded like someone was doing aerobics up there.) Anyway, off-Broadway simply refers to a play performed in a theatre that seats fewer than 500.

Some profits from the show go to Dress for Success, “an international not-for-profit organization that promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.”Cool.

accomplishing goals

Yesterday, my roommate and I finally made it to Magnolia Bakery, where tourists have flocked for overpriced cupcake adventures since Sarah Jessica Parker ate one on Sex and the City.

Honestly? It was worth all 300 pennies.

(But it wasn’t worth the line we encountered the first time we tried, at the bakery’s original Greenwich Village location.)

conyne eylandt