Breakfast@TheBigTable resumes at 10AM on Saturday

Thalia of Pennsylvania, our weekend breakfast chef has been working on
a new menu and will prepare things on Friday so that Saturday and
Sunday will begin happily.

New to the menu:

Corneal pancakes with breakfast sausage patties, Grade B Vermont syrup
and whipped butter

Brioche French Toast a la Orange Rhum Banana with whipped butter and
Grade B Vermont syrup

Irish Oatmeal with fresh apple slices, raising, raisins, and sugar in
the raw.

Most everything else is back, including the Crunchy Monsieur ham and
cheese sandwich, the creamy egg sandwich, the Applewood bacon and the
lemon curd.

College Basketball

There is an argument made during beer commercials that college
basketball is better than professional basketball because the games
mean more to the college players. Professional basketball players may
be more talented but they know they're going to be paid whatever
happens; they play too many games and the travel schedule is
unbelievable.

This is similar to my feelings about student concerts at the New
England Conservatory, Boston's Division 1 Music Power. The concerts
are free and NEC's Jordan Hall is a beautiful surprise that is one
block from Symphony Hall. A stairway takes you abruptly up from the
sidewalk, into a small lobby, another foyer and then into one of
Boston's best secret spaces. Jordan Hall looks like a concert hall in
the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the audience is casual but very
involved with the music.

On Su Ja 21 Karen Gomyo will play at 8PM. Her fall concert was
altogether amazing, ending with tango music written by Astor Piazzola.
This is free and that is the final charm of Jordan Hall. Maybe you'd
hesitate to spend $20 to $50 for an unfamiliar event but to see someone
like Karen Gomyo for free is why you live in the city.

Cambridge Parking Rules

MIT doesn't really start until Tu Fe 6, although some of the geniuses
are in town for Independent Activity Period. String theory, charm
school and very scientific courses about wine.

Harvard students come back for reading period and exams, then return
home. Classes resume on We Ja 31.

UMass. resumes classes on Ja 27.

2006 Hype in Review

Basic Instinct 2 did $5,000,000 in domestic grosses. Despite several
weeks of hype that plainly did not convince anyone to leave the
comforts of their home. Sharon Stone returns to her career as a
product shill in Europe and a favorite of fashion editors in the US.

Outkast's Idlewild was everywhere before it opened. No one went after
it opened. The domestic gross was $12,000,000.

Also Madonna didn't work out for Versace and Sex in the City star, and
Dee Snyder look-alike Sarah Jane Parker still doesn't work for The Gap.

Other people's Ten Best Movies for 2006

This year was unusual because there were not, as is common, fifteen to
twenty movies that might be plausibly listed on anyone's list of the
Ten Best Movies.

Colin Covert of the Minnesota Star-Tribune doesn't like these lists but
he did mention the following films.
http://www.startribune.com/10137/rich_media/893591.html
1. Borat
2. United 93
3. The Departed
4. The Descent
5. Thank You for Smoking
6. Half Nelson
7. The Devil Wears Prada
8. V for Vendetta
9 A Prarie Home Companion

Ruthie Stein reviews movies for the SF Chronicle.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/12/31/

PKG1VN67IU1.DTL&hw=2006+best+movies&sn=003&sc=947

1. Little Miss Sunshine
2. The Queen
3. The Departed
4. Little Children
5. Babel
6. Dreamgirls
7. Pan's Labrynith
8. The Painted Veil
9. Notes on a Scandal
10. The Lives of Others

Ella Taylor writes for LA Weekly.
http://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/film/best-films-of-2006-in-no-order-

that-makes-sense-with-liberal-cheating/15309/
1. Army of Shadows (1969's French Resistance movie by Jean Pierre
Melville)
2. Old Joy
3. The Queen
4. Iraq in Fragments
Our Brand is Crisis
5. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
6. Family Law
7. Venus
49 Up
8. Lassie
Monster House
9. Fateless
10. Borat

Scott Foundas also writes for LA Weekly
http://www.laweekly.com/film+tv/film/the-best-films-of-2006-the-year-

of-army-of-shadows/15308/
1. Army of Shadows
2. Flags of Our Fathers
Letters From Iwo Jima
3. United 93
4. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
5. L'Inturus
Inland Empire
6. Happy Feet
Apocalypto
7. Climates
Miami Vice
8. Children of Men
L'Enfant
9. A Prairie Home Companion
10. Talladega Nights
Jackass Number 2

Weekend Sports in the NYTimes

The Shallow Section of the Sunday NYTimes continues to offer its own
view of life in the big city. On Ja 2 07 the Times featured a small
roster of 15 weddings. No black people. No Hispanics. No South
Asians. One homosexual couple. Hispanics are the most invisible of
New Yorkers. They rarely appear in the Sunday Styles section despite
being the city's largest ethnic group. Otherwise this was a pretty
boring collection of couplings. As the Leonard Koppett of wedding news
the only statistic that emerges from this week's reports is that 7 of
the 30 people involved went to law school or were going to law school.

Was this part of the paper ever interesting? There's an unsurprising
piece about happy nerds at Google and two stories about those darn baby
boomers.
Two heirs to a cosmetic fortune are featured in a fashion piece that
threatens the Wall of Separation between editorial and advertising.
Maybe they're friends of someone who writes for the paper as a regular
reader might often suspect when reading this part of the Times. Is
there any other reason for the short feature about two astrologers from
Detroit? There is a scary picture of Suzanne Bartsch in an article
about losing expensive jewelry at an expensive beach. Maybe she did a
favor for someone?

The ThursdayStyles section is utterly hopeless, but what the
SundayStyles wants to do is not so bad: create a cast of characters
and types that suggest what the hip parts of the city are like, sort of
Lake Wobegon on the Hudson. British newspapers are very good at this.
The Times is not.

"I am not a mime."

Before she became famous and completely fabulous in The Dresden Dolls,
Amanda Palmer worked as a street performer in Harvard Square. She was
the Eight Foot Tall Bride, towering over everyone in front of Holyoke
Center, looking Kabuki-weird-and-white. In a recent conversation about
whatever decline is happening in Harvard Square she said, "Mimes are
the canaries in the coal mine. When I talk to street performers they
want to work around Quincy Market. Harvard Square is not a good place
because there aren't that many people."