A Father's Day Uncorked - The Denver Post

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_15327505

A Father's Day uncorked

By Catherine Getches The Denver Post

It really didn't have much to do with the wine, sometimes the cork is the amazing thing. People are always trying to do cool things with corks - A mere cork board, you say? How about my cork wreath? Think your cork floors are cool? Well check out my cork iPhone cover. Most people save theirs thinking...one day, one day, I'm really going to do something really cool with these. Which winds up meaning: look at my basket full of corks.

Drinking wine brings back less memories of spending time with my dad than, say, drinking skim milk during dinner growing up. And not just because skim milk doesn't have the potential to make your memories muddled.

After leaving for college and visiting "home" back in Boulder, family dinners together finally graduated from being annoyed with questions like "how was your day" to enjoying great conversations, laughing together, realizing the world doesn't revolve around you (what?), and that your parents are actually cool (What? What?). Also, more and more frequently, dinners were spent out celebrating something: When you move away and have less time together everything seems more festive, packed in, potent.

Out one night, while staying completely engaged in conversation I noticed my Dad doing his "neat" thing at the table, cleaning and organizing around his plate, making sure the fork was straight, and then came the challenge: balancing the cork from a bottle of Kings Estate Pinot Noir on the end of a fork as if he was putting a little soldier to attention in a precarious position.

My Dad, a man of routine and order (nails clipped on Fridays, pushups each morning after rolling out of bed... wait, are those hospital corners on his perfectly stacked of t-shirts?) is no stiff. He also likes a good game, a small prank - as in, standing still behind some door my mom is about to open for the delight of seeing her scream with her hands in the air and then dissolve into laughter.

At dinner we were all in a debate about something (because when you're in college having lots of opinions suddenly seems cool), and I kept knocking the cork over. Not entirely noticing at first, he kept righting it, I kept knocking it over, back and forth, grinning inside, until the bill came. The cork became a hot potato on the way home, and later, a member of mileage plus.

I think the first place I put the cork was in one of his cowboy boots, the boots I'd hide next to on the floor of his closet, behind his hanging suits. He'd ride his bike home from work (yes in a suit and cowboy boots), and I'd run upstairs to hide.

He'd come in to change into something comfortable before dinner, and I'd wait to scare him, grab his boots at the ankles, and then squeal down the hall laughing uncontrollably. This never got old, and my mom wouldn't let on that I was hiding up there just like the 4 nights before. I thought I managed to scare him a good deal of the time; if not, he did a good job of pretending for my sake.

I found the cork more that once in my suitcase; the first was once I unpacked my bags back in New York City. He found it in his coat pocket when I flew back to Colorado on a visit for Christmas. When my mom and dad visited our six floor Manhattan walk-up I was sure I didn't give him a chance to hide it anywhere ... until I opened a carton of Ben & Jerry's icecream later that night.

He managed to get buzzed back in and climbed the stairs (he could tell you the exact number, I'm sure) and convinced my roommate to let him in. After a visit home for Thanksgiving I laughed to myself picturing him turning on the hot water in the shower and getting burned by the sight of the cork sitting there next to the shampoo.

I moved from New York to Arizona and from Arizona to Sonoma. And the cork came, too. He found the cork in his briefcase, I found it in a sock. It was in my carry-on bag, and on his computer keyboard at his office. Once I planted it "on his person," during a hug goodbye in his parka packet - a feat I felt particularly victorious over. It has been in more places than I can remember over the last 10 years and we have never spoken a word about any of the cork game.

I almost brought it up once, worried that it was lost for a couple months, a family trip to Seattle for a funeral and a few more visits that passed by without seeing it. Sometimes I can't remember who has it.

Didn't I leave it last in his dop kit? Wait, what if he never looked in the bag under his bike seat? But it shows up again. He finds it in a Netflix envelope, I find it next to some tea in the pantry.

I moved to San Francisco and then San Diego; the cork came, too. I came home for my sister's baby shower and left with a cork in my running shoe. He visited San Diego and I retrieved the mail and the cork from the mailbox.

Even if I can't get home as much as I want, even if my Dad is bad at e-mail and I'm worse at talking on the phone, the cork seems to opens up a place where I can laugh with my Dad across all that distance and preserve all the memories. The game might not some close to that crafty cork trivet or wine charm, but it's still pretty cool, as long as I win.

This Round on Me - Salon.com

                                                                                                        March 23, 2011

Welch, a 71-year-old retired property manager who lives in Richmond, Va., doesn't see any reason why he shouldn't bear arms while he gets caffeinated. "I don't know of anybody who would provide me with defense other than myself, so I routinely as a way of life carry a weapon, and that extends to my coffee shops," he said.

— Associated Press, on an effort by some gun owners to exercise and advertise their rights to openly carry firearms.

Dear Juicy (whom I accidentally shot in Starbucks),

It is my unalienable right to own a gun, and so is my right to go to Starbucks six times a day. And now that I can proudly bear arms in public, displaying my Colt 1911 wherever I go, I feel safer and I’m sure everyone around me does, too. Still, I’d like to explain the string of events that day.

Walking into Starbucks with my firearm in plainsight, I saw clear evidence that carrying a gun is a comforting gesture that coaxes small children to cling to their mother: maybe my weapon instinctually reminds them of safe havens, i.e. the womb. Put it this way: When I saw this doe-eyed kid hanging for dear life from her mother’s hair, it was a mirror image of the glistening eyes of a petrified deer you’re about to shoot. Too bad the kid was such a klutz in her affection, causing her mother to spill a scalding latte all over herself and the child.

But man did that image get me amped up to go hunting, especially after I got my hot, skinny, upside down, venti, quad ristretto, extra dry, caramel machiatto, with one (I-said-one) shot of simple syrup. The drink really seemed to be kicking in, or maybe I was just warmed with feelings of pride in the Second Amendment, but dang if soon enough I couldn’t actually hear my heartbeat.  And I’m pretty certain the vein in my forehead was visibly pulsating. I tried to concentrate on hunting – “get your game face on Gary” – I remember saying to myself between chugs of my drink and chest thumps. Maybe I’d bring me home a new buck to mount on my wall ... come to think of it, Starbucks (get it: Star ”bucks”) should display five star bucks on its walls, or at least give out free shots for one.

Great thoughts like that were coming to me like rapid fire. I could feel my synapses firing faster, and I didn’t want it to stop. So I got back in line for another cup. But, hold on, what the F? Did that pierced twit in skinny jeans seriously just cut in front of me? That’s when I decided to see how he liked the feel of my holster, which I delicately rammed it into his ribs. He saw a patriot before him and stood down, and I retook my place in line behind a pregnant woman with a stroller.

But goddamn! Was that stroller big enough? At least my GMC extra-wide extended-cab truck takes gas and supports our economy. Even worse, the menace-to-society was screaming for milk. As a citizen concerned with the security of a free state, I got the toddler’s attention by suggestively fingering the firearm’s trigger, just to show this zero-wage earner, lolling back and gurgling like some freeloading, stoned hippie, that it’s not acceptable to disrupt the public peace ... And that’s when the thing really started to wail.

Praise Heston, at this point I felt like I could hear everything louder; more clearly. And that crying kid was driving me to drink. More coffee. When the boy barrista, sung out “Caaaa-rrrry,” in what was a much-too high-pitched voice, I nearly grabbed my gun, especially when he seemed to wink at me as I retrieved my cup with a heart scribbled next to “Cary” on it.

Mmmmm it was molten tasty goodness. I’ll admit, at this point I was really clenching my jaw, but I hadn’t felt this kind of adrenaline rush in a while. Sweat beads were forming on my forehead, so I started towards the napkins when a piercing dagger sensation in my bowels said to me, “Get to the bathroom.” But damn if the door wasn’t locked.

At this point my colon could have been described as a ‘loose canon.’ Mere seconds before I started firing at the door handle, the door opened and a woman walked out. I hustled in only to seemingly be hit by a wall of napalm. I looked back to what could possibly have created a smell worse than a diaper full of Indian food, and it was all I could do to refrain from using the “Juicy” on the backside of her pink velour tracksuit as a target.

When I emerged morning rush was in full-force...my hands were shaking... I couldn’t adjust my eyes to the surroundings, I heard the fatal words “Triple Shot.” And maybe something triggered my gun instinct from Nam; I’m not sure what happened next, but Juicy, I do want to apologize to you and your behind. I did not intend to unload a round into your rear. All in all, I am interested in your safety as mine while I get caffeinated. Maybe we can make the best of this, say, have a drink together. I should get a coffee and think about it.

Cheers.

Curling: Like drinking merlot

March 7, 2010

"People at Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and even the Treasury Department have gone a bit curling crazy."— The New York Times, Feb. 25, "On Wall Street, a romance with the curling stone"

"It is like drinking merlot" — Douglas A. Kass, president of Seabreeze Partners, who got hooked on Olympic curling a few years ago via CNBC

Kizzle Kazzle Stone Merlot:

This nonvintage gem displays its northern terroir well, providing a nice contrast to your everyday Molson, eh? Especially when paired with watching paint dry.

Its straightforward structure with nuances of horseshoes offers a long, drawn-out flavor, rife with notes of harried housekeeping and intense aromas that are more I'm-on-the-floor than forest floor.

Complexity suggests the janitorial with surprising accents of dress shoes (not sure what that's aboot).

Perfumes of slush turn to bouquets of Teflon soles mixed with light perspiration.

Less vegetal and more vegetative, this pairs nicely with NoDoz or anything to prop your eyelids open.

With a sort of brushing jamminess, it gets perceptibly longer on the palate as you attempt to swallow, so best eased if served on ice.

The finish may or may not come before you fall asleep, but if it does it tastes like the tears of small children, rounded out by an uncommon formality evocative of gentlemanly handshakes of yore.

Food match: Sip and savor with peameal bacon, bison, poutine, beaver tails, Tim Hortons, Canada Dry and coffee crisp.

Catherine Getches is a freelance writer in San Diego.

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

New York Times/International Herald Tribune

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Go Kiss a Frog

By CATHERINE GETCHES

Published: December 18, 2009

Parent alert: The Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

— The New York Times.

Dear Walt Disney Company,

I would also like a refund for “Cinderella,” my first Disney movie.

“Cinderella’s” claim that “dreams do come true” is grossly misleading and none of mine have come true, even when following instructions to wish upon a star.

I too have a nasty step mother, but unlike Cinderella, who led me to believe that if I cook and clean and wait around long enough, mice will make me dresses and the universe will practically hand stuff to me, this has not happened.

All these years I pinned my life on the claim that having nice feet would get me somewhere. I even misplaced a grossly impractical high heel on the step outside a bar one night and raced home before midnight. But this has done nothing in the hot-man-arriving-at-my-door department. And I’m out a shoe.

Speaking of corrupt claims, the scam that is “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” also calls for a refund. Because of Ms. White’s guidance — I quote: “What do you do when things go wrong? Oh! You sing a song!” — I have basically been brainwashed for years. Whenever life got bad I’d belt out a tune — say, “Too Legit,” or “Going Back to Cali” — and for whatever reason, people shoot me strange looks and hurry in the other direction, even when I throw in some killer dance moves, i.e. the running man.

And just like the so-called fairest of them all, I, too, found myself in an unsatisfying situation (again, nasty stepmother). So, I asked myself: “What would Disney do?” I moved in with a group of seven, very short older men. After acquiring a borderline schizophrenic reaction to people who whistle at work, I was met not with prince charming, but only a choice between a bunch of guys who get their jeans at Gap Kids.

Years later, Sneezy has become what I can only categorize as The Beast. And I will not hesitate to point out that “Beauty and the Beast” is also legally actionable. Turns out you were right about one thing: Looks really don't matter at all — if you are a man. Underneath his abusive exterior is not a loving heart.

After all this hating on me, you must be joking if you think I am going to kiss someone formerly known for his involuntary explosions of mucous simply on the faith that, as you suggest, abusive hostage takers are all princes in the end.

In your favor, I will give you “Alice in Wonderland” — when things don't seem right, eating a magic mushroom really should be considered the de facto solution. How about when the doorknob tells her “Nothing’s impossible”? I have sooo been rocking back and forth on the bathroom floor thinking just that.

When Alice says, “It would be nice if something made sense for a change,” no truer words have been spoken. Good ol’ Alice: In my previous lawsuit against McDonalds for making me fat, I cited expert testimony from Alice (in addition to several evidentiary plus-size pants with slit-open seams) that food does in fact say “EAT ME” and “DRINK ME.”

Not to go on harping on these things, but like Peter Pan, for years and years I have refused to grow up. Yet it is patently false that all it takes to fly is to “think a wonderful thought, faith, trust, and pixie dust.”

Unless you mean figuratively, with another kind of “pixie dust,” there are no wonderful thoughts, faith or trust involved in flying these days. “Peter Pan” in essence is nothing more than (and I hate to slander) a fairy tale: Flying involves paying money, missing years of your life waiting and being delayed, and seatmates who clip their toenails.

As this legal action proceeds, I will have you note that, like the Little Mermaid, I recently traded in my voice after a deal with an evil stranger for chance at love with a man I’ve only seen once. There go my chances of following your advice to sign up for a high school musical for a one-way ticket to popularity.

Catherine Getches is managing editor of the San Francisco Classical Voice (sfcv.org), which promotes classical music in the Bay Area.

The original pick-up artist

At 57, James Toback is clean, sober and married. But the legendary Hollywood womanizer and gambler still bets his life on every new movie (and talks to strangers in Central Park).

By Catherine Getches

As we walk though Central Park, James Toback tells me a true story that sounds more like a scene from a movie. It's about a pedophile, accused of sleeping with boys, on the run from the police and $10,000 in debt to a bookie, who has just shown up at Toback's hotel room door begging for the money. Suddenly, Toback's voice begins to trail off. Something has caught his eye. He grabs my forearm; we stop walking.

"Come over here," he says. "I want to show you something. This is an example of how I get a bad reputation."

With his hands on my shoulders, he focuses me on a woman with long blond hair who is reading cross-legged on a blanket in the middle of the Great Lawn. "This is what I do," he whispers as we head toward her, "I see this girl, and she looks like she may be interesting. And as I get closer and closer I see if she still holds my attention. I see if there's a gravitational pull; because if there isn't, what's the fucking point?"

But we walk past her. He pans his arm from left to right across the skyline of trees that surround Central Park, This shot could be an establishing scene.

Then we actually turn back and walk up to her. His hand is on my back, guiding us toward her, and I'm nervous, scrambling for something to say. But he takes the lead, and as he approaches her he says, "Excuse me. I wonder. Have you ever done, or would you be interested in doing, anything cinematic? And if you are, would you be interested in discussing it?" Squinting her eyes in confusion and blushing, she asks what he means.

"My name's James Toback," he smiles as he shakes her hand. "I'm a movie director. Have you ever seen 'Black and White' or 'Two Girls and a Guy' or 'The Pick-Up Artist'?" She shakes her head no.

So he jokes, "You're under arrest," and turns the conversation to her. "Are you a student? What are you majoring in? Did you vote for her for Senate?" he asks, pointing to the Clinton for Senate flier in her lap. He's captivated her. She plays with her hair and beams up at the bearded, balding man who might put her name in bright lights.

He's as charming as Robert Downey Jr.'s character in "The Pick-Up Artist" (1987), the compulsive womanizer who combs the Upper West Side for candidates and justifies his behavior by saying, "I have a vested interest in meeting strangers. Every woman that I've ever liked or communed with or given great satisfaction to always started off as a stranger."

The girl has forgotten that Toback is a stranger. He interrupts her giggles and goings-on about voting for Clinton. "Check out my work," he says. "If you see anything you think you connect with and might want to be a part of -- without promising anything -- call me."

A one-of-a-kind-opportunity smile forms on her face, she hands him her flier and he writes his number on it. As she thanks him, we turn away and he says, "I do that 15 times a week. Well, OK, maybe 50 times a week. Forty girls and 10 guys."

Toback's routine reveals how life is a laboratory for his films. The director brazenly puts himself in dicey situations and then bases his films on the resulting risks and consequences. Of the nine movies he has written and directed, all are autobiographical to some extent. Just as "The Pick-Up Artist" reflects Toback's personality, so do the rest of his films.

"The idea is not to have a separation between my life and my movies," Toback says. The claim is not a novel one but seems especially interesting in his case. By leading a hopelessly theatrical life, he has found the fodder for nine films. He's an East Coast guy with West Coast connections who, like Orson Welles, demonstrates the creative uses of his theatrical extravagances.

Although Toback's obsessive lifestyle has created obstacles for him, it has also provided the formula for his filmmaking. With the release of his last film, "Black and White" (1999), Toback "[threw] down a challenge to every other filmmaker working in this country," proclaimed Film Journal. Now, at 57 and married for the second time, Toback is releasing "Harvard Man," which opened last week in New York and should reach other cities soon. It's a movie he's talked about making for more than a decade. His most autobiographical yet, it seems to encapsulate all his gambles.

Ask anyone in the film industry about Toback, and his less discreet days of '70s excess as a gambler, partygoer and womanizer are sure to arise. His libido was so legendary that in 1989 Spy magazine published an eight-page foldout chart of his exploits called "The Pick-Up Artist's Guide to Picking Up Women."

But Toback never concealed his behavior; he flaunted it. He even wrote a book, "Jim" (1971), an admittedly self-centered biography of football legend Jim Brown that chronicles Toback's experience as a Jewish white guy who lived with Brown in Hollywood, a life that was essentially a series of wild parties and orgies: "Jim [Brown] is making his rounds ... Jane Fonda is there and Sharon Tate ... I drift into an old friend, a delicate girl of angled, Nordic beauty ... and embark with her on an orgy ... Jim joins."

Jul 2, 2002 | The book includes tidbits of advice, like Warren Beatty's supposed suggestion to include a small part for a pretty young actress in every motion picture and to schedule auditions for that part late in the day. Indeed, Toback's films include a troupe of pretty young women, from unknowns to recognized actresses like Nastassja Kinski ("Exposed," 1983), Heather Graham ("Two Girls and a Guy," 1997), Claudia Schiffer ("Black and White," 1999) and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who stars in "Harvard Man."

In Toback's new film, sex, gambling, madness and drugs converge in a story loosely based on his college days at Harvard (class of 1966). Adrian Grenier stars as Alan Jensen, a philosophy student and the star of Harvard's basketball team, lured by his girlfriend and Mafia princess Cindy Bandolini (Gellar) to fix the team's game against Yale. But before the big game Alan drops LSD and winds up tripping for eight days. Soon the FBI and the Mafia are after him and his solution is to seek refuge in the arms of his sexy, bisexual philosophy teacher.

Toback sees "Harvard Man" as a complete fulfillment of his vision. "It is the first movie that really makes madness felt," says Toback. "You get the sense of the hallucinatory beauty of it," he adds, referring to the digital-effects-laden scene of Alan's trip. "It's both the ecstasy and excruciating pain of death." It includes what he describes as his favorite hallucination: seeing a nude woman walk out of a Gauguin painting.

We've almost made it to the west side of Central Park, a place Toback says he visits every day. His pace is surprisingly quick; he swerves from path to path knowingly. Near a reservoir he points left to a minicanyon of rocks and twisted trees where the opening scene of "Black and White" was filmed. But the scene is memorable more for its sex than the landscape. It opens to the beat of the Stylistics' '70s hit "Daddy's Little Girl," and the camera pans to a ménage à troisfeaturing two young girls and a black gangster pressed up against a tree while another black man looks on. Though the copulating trio is mostly clothed, it is incredibly suggestive, even after the three cuts necessary to get an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Sex has always been one of Toback's favorite subjects, especially when it's raw and unadulterated. He favors direct, explicit sexual depiction over watered-down anesthetized scenes because, he says, sexual obsession and sexual duplicity are ignored in American movies today. The director doesn't want to make NC-17 movies (many theater chains won't show them and many newspapers won't advertise them). He knows that an R rating is more marketable, but insists there's a purpose behind his explicit material.

"The whole idea of a sex scene," Toback told Charlie Rose in a 1998 TV interview, "is that it be a scene in which characters reveal themselves by the specifics of their behavior. If it's worth making a movie about these characters, it's worth understanding their sexual nature." Read On...

Husband Hal

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Husband Hal
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By Catherine Getches
Saturday, August 22, 2009

"Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems. . . . How would it be, for example, to relate to a machine that is as intelligent as your spouse?"

-- The New York Times, July 25

Hello, Human Wife.

According to facial recognition data, I detect your lengthy glare at the toilet seat that I left up, and identify your heavy human breath noise while flinging my wet towel from your side of the bed and into the hamper. Might I suggest this combo special for Bright and Clean toilet bowl cleaner that comes with Free and Gentle bleach? Maybe then our towels will be as white-bright as my mom [CHEER(TM)-fully] mentioned approximately 2.7 times on her last visit, according to statistics with an accuracy ratio of plus or minus 0.33, given what may or may not have been a passive-aggressive tone -- neither men nor robots can accurately tell. The pop-up now conveniently appearing on my forehead shows that said cleaning products can be bought 0.8 miles down the street at Walgreens.

Behavioral tracking confirms that fresh coffee and homemade waffles before I leave for work are a thing of the past. Authentication on recent activity demonstrates a preference to check Facebook and wear an iPod rather than confer with Robot Husband, who can't find his hard drive or brown belt anywhere, again.

According to credit card activity that I can constantly monitor and flash in front of your face on this handy hand screen right here, you had your hair done last week. I couldn't tell you had anything done. But it, the spa treatment and a $257 charge at Saks Fifth Avenue do not fit in the "necessary expenses" column of our budget. (Data show an almost Pavlovian tendency to pay more when offered a coupon to "save more when you spend more.") I will enable a friendly ping noise to go off similar to the one that signals you to buy more beer when the refrigerator gets low. Wow, that ever-deepening furrow in your brow just won't quit, will it? Might I recommend Botox? And, while you're e-mailing your sister about the death of her labradoodle, I thought it might be helpful to flash these discounts on coffins -- now available at Costco!

Your Facebook status update reveals that you are looking forward to your book club meeting. Poke. Here's a friend suggestion: Oprah. The least you could do is become a fan of O Magazine. Here's a mojito to that. Why don't you take the quiz: "Which Desperate Housewife Are You?"

I noticed from monitoring your Internet activity that you Googled "weight loss." Might I also point you to this anorexia blog? Let's face up to the large pixels on your thighs -- thesaurus correction, cellulite -- that grapefruit diet isn't exactly working at what I'd call DSL speed. It's time to up the ante. And if you're interested in upping the ante, online poker is huge. Think you have a gambling problem? Maybe you'd also be interested in AA. Dialing back on drinking all that chardonnay at the book club might also get some of that junk out of your trunk. Do you know how many calories are in a glass of wine? There's an app for that.

You are correct that I said I'd be home right after golf. But this will be followed by a necessary reboot and lengthy system updates on the couch. Warning: This could take up to two hours to complete. (Ping!) Better stock the fridge.

No sex again tonight? Well, Bob just forwarded me a hilarious YouTube video, and you would not believe the late-night selection online!

Numbers show you snore at a higher-than-average decibel level, something that has proportionately increased with your nose-hair growth, which also seems proportional to the rotundity of your rear. Ah, all this "being on" has me fried. Need more power. Have you seen my plug? I can't find it anywhere.

Catherine Getches is a freelance writer in San Diego.

• 

• LIFE & STYLE
• MARCH 27, 2009

A Different Sort of Advice for Consumers

By CATHERINE GETCHES

The ubiquitous Zagat guides are known for an assortment of mostly leisure-related topics including hotels, spas, golf courses, movies and nightlife. Now the editors are asking people to post reviews of their doctors.-- New York Times

Dermatology and Cosmetic Center

Try to "put your best face forward" as you are greeted at the door because, walking in, you "feel like you're under the microscope." Still, teens say they "feel welcomed" by staff, who greet them reassuringly. Penny-pinchers often leave "red in the face" after the bill arrives for an acid peel, "wondering what happened to their wallet," while other "clean-cut clientele" wax-on about the "Brazilian influences." The "eclectic menu" of services allows for "innovative pairings" where "fun-in-the-sun types" can find a "magnificent molé" handled with "cutting edge" attention. "Ladies Who Lunch" like the "uplifting treatment," adding that the facial service "fills a niche," lamenting that "others could do more about long lines out front."

Brite Smiles

Dentists at this "temple to all that is toothsome" score extra points for "signature" services though "waits can be like pulling teeth." "Up-and-coming meth addicts" and "boomers" converge at this "brassy, sassy" "mouth-popping" spot, where devotees "drive for miles" for what they call "drilled down" service and cognoscenti claim "excellent value." Despite "harried service," the "BYO policy" for nitrous oxide helps you avoid "breaking the bank" while you head to "nirvana." Some bemoan the "stuffy coat policy" for X-rays, which can "really weigh you down." And everyone seems to agree that while the post-op drooling "can be interminable," but the "quaint" décor and "old-world kitsch" ("drift off to the soothing aquatic-themed posters on the ceiling") can "really hit the spot" when that abscess on your gums hemorrhages and the "staff doesn't give you the time of day."

ER

"Not great for private functions," this "nice addition to the Downtown scene" is "always packed." Prepare to "stand in line behind high-rollers," who get "the VIP treatment," not the RIP treatment. While "service can vary," some say it is the "final word" on the subject. The atmosphere "could use some help," though the "frenetic pace" and "people watching" is enough to "pique your curiosity." Some surgical service can be "choppy," and you can "feel a little privileged even to be seated" in the face of "tremendous competition." Habitués frequent because they can't "resist to overdose on everything," even when the "invisible attitude" from staff is de rigueur. Simply put, "palatial prices" prove you can't afford to "come back every day." Be sure to "dress to the teeth and allow lots of time," especially for anyone on a "heaven-sent" trip or just an "unexpected special event." Those who "overdo their stay" can find "no words" to express their feelings.

Colon and Rectal Care

"The name says it all" at this Bronx establishment that "draws an older crowd" of regulars who "make it a tradition." Friendly doctors are known for "impeccable attention to detail" at this institution that "shatters stereotypes" with "south of the border flair." Fans say to "go hungry" because "pure indulgence" follows in downing "huge portions" of fluid. Most report back on the "polished service" and "leave feeling as if walking on air." "Designated driver" is recommended.

Ms. Getches is a writer and editor based in California.