The Odds! The Ends!

February has so far been a wall-to-wall festival of hat hair, which starts to bog down one's self-presentation efforts after a while. I recall deciding not to try any more around last Tuesday. Maybe I'll just start wearing one of those earflap caps all day . . . Highlights from New York last weekend that I didn't mention yet: eating an onion bagel with whitefish salad in a coffee shop while reading Richard Ford; watching the Muppet Show on DVD with Andy & Lisa; sitting in on a musicology presentation Dan did up at Columbia, on Ralph Vaughan Williams and the concurrent British vogue for John Constable & pastoralism in art; perusing the Frick Collection with Dan & Mandy on Sunday before Metro Northing it back to town. Good times! . . . Speaking of bagels, a coworker tipped me off that the coffeeshop by the office imports actual bagels from Brooklyn, which I've happily been eating for breakfast ever since. So far I'd only observed a disturbing tendency for people here to classify Bruegger's as actual bagels. I still miss Astoria Bagels, which was situated on Ditmars between my first apartment and the train station; they cooked their own bagels right there. Full, hearty, crusty: now those were bagels! . . . I guess there's not much to say about the Super Bowl (Lost Puppy Found on Field — Answers to Rex) but I thought Prince really put on a fine halftime show, which actually came across like a concert this year. When it started I joked to the folks I was watching it with that Prince would be more entertaining with a marching band, and then the marching band came out so it was all like, Yeah, I totally called that! Sweeet.