"Ratatouille" La película.

MOVIES

Voilà! A Rat for All Seasonings By A. O. SCOTT Published: June 29, 2007

Disney Enterprises/Pixar Animation Studios Remy the epicure rat and Linguini the kitchen worker in a scene from the animated Pixar film written and directed by Brad Bird.

The moral of "Ratatouille" is delivered by a critic: a gaunt, unsmiling fellow named Anton Ego who composes his acidic notices in a coffin-shaped room and who speaks in the parched baritone of Peter O'Toole. "Not everyone can be a great artist," Mr. Ego muses. "But a great artist can come from anywhere." Quite so. Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, "Ratatouille" is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised. Its sensibility, implicit in Mr. Ego's aphorism, is both exuberantly democratic and unabashedly elitist, defending good taste and aesthetic accomplishment not as snobbish entitlements but as universal ideals. Like "The Incredibles," Mr. Bird's earlier film for Pixar, "Ratatouille" celebrates the passionate, sometimes aggressive pursuit of excellence, an impulse it also exemplifies. The hero (and perhaps Mr. Bird's alter ego) is Remy (Patton Oswalt), a young rat who lives somewhere in the French countryside and conceives a passion for fine cooking. Raised by garbage-eaters, he is drawn toward a more exalted notion of food by the sensitivity of his own palate and by the example of Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), a famous chef who insists — more in the manner of Julia Child than of his real-life haute cuisine counterparts — that "anyone can cook."

Multimedia Video Movie Minutes "Ratatouille". Audio Slide Show Behind the tiny Chef.

What Remy discovers is that anyone, including his uncultured brother, can be taught to appreciate intense and unusual flavors. (How to translate the reactions of the nose and tongue by means of sound and image is a more daunting challenge, one that the filmmakers, including Michael Giacchino, author of the marvelous musical score, meet with effortless ingenuity.) Remy's budding culinary vocation sets him on a lonely course, separating him from his clannish, philistine family and sending him off, like so many young men from the provinces before him, to seek his fortune in Paris. That city, from cobblestones to rooftops, is brilliantly imagined by the animators. And, as usual in a Pixar movie, a whole new realm of physical texture and sensory detail has been conquered for animation. "Finding Nemo" found warmth in the cold-blooded, scaly creatures of the deep; "Cars" brought inert metal to life. At first glance, "Ratatouille" may look less groundbreaking, since talking furry rodents are hardly a novelty in cartoons. But the innovations are nonetheless there, in the fine grain of every image: in the matted look of wet rat fur and the bright scratches in the patina of well-used copper pots, in the beads of moisture on the surface of cut vegetables and the sauce-stained fabric of cooks' aprons. Individually, the rats are appealing enough, but the sight of dozens of them swarming through pantries and kitchens is appropriately icky, and Mr. Bird acknowledges that interspecies understanding may have its limits.

Related A Rat With a Whisk and a Dream (June 13, 2007) It's Not a Sequel, but It Might Seem Like One After the Ads (April 24, 2007) Film: He Runs That Mickey Mouse Outfit (March 4, 2007)

Perhaps because animation, especially the modern computer-assisted variety, is the work of so many hands and the product of so much invested capital, we are used to identifying animated movies with their corporate authors: Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar and so on. But while the visual effects in "Ratatouille" show a recognizable company stamp, the sensibility that governs the story is unmistakably Mr. Bird's. A veteran of "The Simpsons" and a journeyman writer for movies and television, he has emerged as an original and provocative voice in American filmmaking. He is also, at least implicitly, a severe critic of the laziness and mediocrity that characterize so much popular culture. He criticizes partly by example, by avoiding the usual kid-movie clichés and demonstrating that a clear, accessible story can also be thoughtful and unpredictable. "Ratatouille" features no annoying sidekick and no obtrusive celebrity voice-work, and while Remy is cute, he can also be prickly, demanding and insecure. Moreover, his basic moral conflict — between family obligation and individual ambition — is handled with unusual subtlety and complexity, so that the reassurances and resolutions of the movie's end feel earned rather than predetermined. And while the film buzzes with eye-pleasing action and incident — wild chases, hairbreadth escapes, the frenzied choreography of a busy kitchen — it does not try to overwhelm its audience with excessive noise and sensation. Instead Mr. Bird integrates story and spectacle with the light, sure touch that Vincente Minnelli brought to his best musicals and interweaves the tale of Remy's career with beguiling subplots and curious characters.

Disney Enterprises/Pixar Animation Studios Remy, the rat with the palate, in a scene from "Ratatouille."

Since no Parisian restaurant will let a rat work in its kitchen, Remy strikes a deal with a hapless low-level worker named Linguini (Lou Romano), who executes Remy's recipes by means of an ingenious (and hilarious) form of under-the-toque puppetry. Linguini's second mentor is Colette (Janeane Garofalo), a tough sous-chef who unwittingly becomes the rodent's rival for Linguini's allegiance. Even minor figures — assistant cooks, waiters, a hapless health inspector — show remarkable individuality. At stake in "Ratatouille" is not only Remy's ambition but also the hallowed legacy of Gusteau, whose ghost occasionally floats before Remy's eyes and whose restaurant is in decline. Part of the problem is Gusteau's successor, Skinner (Ian Holm), who is using the master's name and reputation to market a line of mass-produced frozen dinners. Against him, Remy and Mr. Bird take a stand in defense of an artisanal approach that values both tradition and individual talent: classic recipes renewed by bold, creative execution. The movie's grand climax, and the source of its title, is the preparation of a rustic dish made of common vegetables — a dish made with ardor and inspiration and placed, as it happens, before a critic. And what, faced with such a ratatouille, is a critic supposed to say? Sometimes the best response is the simplest. Sometimes "thank you" is enough. RATATOUILLE Opens today nationwide. Directed by Brad Bird; written by Mr. Bird, based on a story by Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco and Mr. Bird; director of photography/lighting, Sharon Calahan; director of photography/camera, Robert Anderson; supervising animators, Dylan Brown and Mark Walsh; edited by Darren Holmes; music by Michael Giacchino; production designer, Harley Jessup; produced by Brad Lewis; released by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated G. WITH THE VOICES OF: Patton Oswalt (Remy), Ian Holm(Skinner), Lou Romano (Linguini), Brian Dennehy(Django), Peter Sohn (Emile), Brad Garrett (Auguste Gusteau), Janeane Garofalo (Colette) and Peter O'Toole(Anton Ego). http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=5644da17f714b5fe2989350e60ec2a1b1505871c

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Las cerezas de Irán.

DINING & WINE

The Cherries of Persia By ELAINE SCIOLINO Published: June 27, 2007

THE ruby-colored iced drink came in a tall glass set on a painted tray. There were other offerings: ice water, hot tea. But the bright color beckoned. It was the summer of 1999 and I was in Shiraz, the Iranian city of calm, good sense and mystical poetry, a place not of religious pilgrimage but of roses, nightingales, rich people who smoke opium and some of the best wine-producing grapes in the world. I had been invited to lunch at the home of Ayatollah Majdeddin Mahallati, a senior Shiite cleric whose family had once wielded extraordinary power and influence. The drink I chose — a sour cherry confection — had the taste of summer. Bitingly tart and soothingly sweet rather than sour, it blocked out the noise and heat and rules of the Islamic Republic just outside the doors of the ayatollah's house. The sour cherry season in Iran is short — only about three weeks from mid-June to early July. The harvest triggers a mad rush to preserve the fruit's electric vibrancy. Sour cherries boiled in sugar and water with just a hint of vanilla produce a rich syrup called sharbat-e albalu. It is stored in bottles to be mixed with water and masses of ice to drink on special occasions throughout the year. On the day of our lunch, the learned ayatollah looked at the glowing liquid and recited from memory a poem of Iran's greatest epic poet, Abolqasem Ferdowsi: "Two things are my favorite, a young companion and an old wine. The young companion takes away all your sorrows, the old wine gives richness to your life." The ayatollah said he was speaking only metaphorically, of course. Shiraz grapes once produced the finest wine in Iran. But we were in the Islamic Republic, which bans all alcohol. Shiraz also produces some of Iran's best sour cherries. So, blissfully, we sipped on sour cherries instead. Related Recipe: Sour Cherry Syrup (June 27, 2007) Adapted from Najmieh Batmanglij 5 cups sugar 4 tablespoons fresh lime juice 3 pounds washed and stemmed sour cherries, unpitted. In a large pan, bring sugar, lime juice and 3 cups water to a boil, stirring occasionally. Tie cherries up in 2 layers of cheesecloth and gently lower into pan. Cook over medium heat for 25 minutes. Remove pan from heat. Lift cherries in their cheesecloth and hold above pan for a minute to let syrup drain. Set cherries aside and let everything cool. Pour syrup into clean jars or bottles. Keep in refrigerator until needed. If desired, place cherries in a clean jar and cover with syrup. Yield: 2 quarts. Note: Stir 3 or 4 parts cold water with 1 part syrup and add ice to make sour cherry coolers. Syrup can also be diluted with sparkling water to make cherry soda, or used in cocktails. Reserved cherries in syrup may be used in desserts or as cocktail cherries.

More on Drinks for Memories.... Drinks for Memories Iced Coffee ?, no sweat. Chapter 1: I Drank the Water Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert A Taste of Freedom For a Future That's Always Rosy Dry Dock It's Not

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Astillero Seco no es !

DINING & WINE

Dry Dock It's Not By SAM SIFTON Published: June 27, 2007

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times The Greenport Shuffle.

DAVID BERSON is a gallivanting boat captain who runs an electric launch, Glory, out of Greenport, N.Y., on the North Fork of Long Island. Captain Berson has been a deck monkey, a guitar hero and a yellow-cab hack over the years, an instructor of celestial navigation and a fair handler of canvas and rope. He smokes a pipe, is a friend of the masses and counts himself a fan of both Emma Goldman and Blind Willie Johnson. He sails cautiously and well, then pours rum with a heavy hand. This is his recipe, a modification of that great Caribbean libation the Painkiller, which itself found birth at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands. The Painkiller features dark rum over shaved ice, frothed with orange and pineapple juice along with some sweetened coconut cream, topped with a shaving of nutmeg. It is rich stuff, a little complicated, a bit much for a long Saturday night of drinking under sea grape and palms. Captain Berson, who served under Eben Whitcomb on the great coasting schooner Harvey Gamage, used to anchor off Jost Van Dyke and has put down his fair share of Painkillers, both at the Soggy Dollar and at the more rough-and-tumble Rudy's Mariners Inn above Great Harbour. He has, over time, whittled down the ingredients for his own version of the drink, for reasons of both thrift and flavor, to come up with a minimalist take on the classic. His friends call it the Greenport Shuffle, for its eventual effect on one's gait. The color should be yellow, cut with bruised brown, like a pineapple left to ripen two days too long, sprinkled with rust. It should taste of summer, and offer the feeling of night air on sunburned skin. Related Recipe: Greenport Shuffle Published: June 27, 2007 Adapted from David Berson Time: 5 minutes 2 ounces aged rum 6 ounces pineapple juice Freshly grated nutmeg. Place crushed ice in a cocktail glass, and pour rum and pineapple juice over it. Stir. Top generously with nutmeg. Yield: 1 cocktail.

More on Drinks for Memories.... Drinks for Memories Iced Coffee ?, no sweat. Chapter 1: I Drank the Water Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert The Cherries of Persia A Taste of Freedom For a Future That's Always Rosy

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Té helado sin té.

DINING & WINE

A Taste of Freedom By GABRIELLE HAMILTON Published: June 27, 2007

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times Long Island iced tea.

ONCE when I was about 13 years old, my best friend, Renee, and I did that thing where you each tell your parents that you are sleeping over at the other's house, and they don't even check. With relative ease, we found ourselves distinctly unchaperoned and hitchhiking the 20 miles to the Trenton, N.J., train station and catching a train to New York City. With even greater ease, we found ourselves — such is the power of the teenage sense of immortality — perched on bar stools at an Upper West Side restaurant saying, "Um, I think I'll have a Long Island iced tea, please." It was the only drink we knew to order. We'd been getting blitzed on them for some time by siphoning off our parents' liquor and replacing it with tap water. I remember being curled up on the orange shag rug, feeling the whole planet spin. The bartender did not card us. The bartender did not roll his eyes to the heavens. He filled — freehand — two giant tulip-shape glasses that could have doubled as hurricane lamps with well liquors, prefab sour mix and cola from a sticky soda gun. And set them down in front of us. We were both the youngest in our families and in so many ways by the time we were 10 we were practically 20. We blew smoke rings. We wore eye shadow. But we were, decisively, not 20. We pooled our crumpled bills and quarters, parsed out in stacks of four, and paid our bill to the penny. We did not tip. Poor service? No, we just didn't know to. That's how young we were. Renee and I made it back unharmed. We caught the last train to Trenton and because we were lit and he was the only other guy in our car, we met a young comedian on the train. We fell over in our seats laughing at all his jokes. And he drove us home and let us out at the end of Renee's silent driveway and we were safe and unmolested, and we grew up and lived our lives. And I am now in my 40's and still drink Long Island iced tea. In spite of having had the kind of adolescence that had orange shag and startlingly distracted parents — some of the things that have made people my age fashionably full of irony — I have never succumbed to that deadly stance. I drink Long Island iced tea sincerely. It is not part of a fashion trend that favors Peter Frampton haircuts and Tab. To be sure, I am not drinking exactly the same Long Island iced tea. Now it is a carefully measured cocktail, made in a tall pint glass packed with ice cubes, filled with premium liquors, topped with Coke from a freshly cracked glass bottle. And I usually stick to just one, with some very delicious fried thing to eat, like fat-bellied clams or oysters with a spicy tartar sauce. The food absorbs the alcohol in just the right way so you get high but not blitzed. Which is safer when hitchhiking. Related Recipe: Recipe: Long Island Iced Tea Published: June 27, 2007 Adapted from Gabrielle Hamilton Time: 10 minutes 3/4 ounce tequila 3/4 ounce vodka 3/4 ounce gin 3/4 ounce white rum 1 1/2 ounces triple sec 3/4 ounce cola 3/4 ounce fresh lemon juice. Pour all ingredients into a pint glass filled with ice and stir. Let sit for 5 minutes. Stir again. Serve. Yield: 1 cocktail.

More on Drinks for Memories.... Drinks for Memories Iced Coffee ?, no sweat. Chapter 1: I Drank the Water Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert The Cherries of Persia For a Future That's Always Rosy Dry Dock It's Not

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Sangría Blanca

DINING & WINE

For a Future That's Always Rosy By MONIQUE TRUONG Published: June 27, 2007

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times White sangria.

HIDDEN within our current tastes and penchants are the persistent and often ignoble residues of our former selves. I call it the Holly Golightly-Lula Mae Principle. Allow me to demonstrate how it works. Of late, my summer drink of choice is a white sangria. It's a floral concoction of white sparkling wine, Cointreau, apple juice and a splash of club soda, generously perfumed with thin slices of white nectarines, green pears and sweet navel oranges. This is my reverse-engineered recipe for a drink that I had first at a restaurant so incandescently hip and cool that it saw no reason to cook its food. An editor at a fancy magazine was paying, so I allowed myself to be taken to a raw foods restaurant. In lieu of a proper meal, I decided to drink myself full and I did. I don't remember too much about the raw foods, but that nutty place really had a way with the white sangria. I serve pitchers of it now on summer evenings and nod with delight when my friends comment on its subtle beauty and intoxicating charm. I hesitate to share with them, though, why my inner Lula Mae adores this chic little quaff. White sangria reminds me of the bottles of convenience store wine coolers that my girlfriends and I consumed in alarming quantities in the back seat of cars while stuck in Texas in the prime of our teenage years. Sweet, cheap and perversely and resolutely not beer (long necks being the patriotic drink of the Republic of Texas), wine coolers were our fast ticket out of sobriety and the confines of our suburban youth. As we twisted off their caps and guzzled their artificial flavors, we were imagining the future. Beautiful and transporting, ambrosial with promises, and complex but never complicated: we wanted it so much we could taste it. The future for us finally arrived and, of course, wasn't quite what we had desired, but a sip of white sangria on a summer night comes pretty close. Related Recipe: White Sangria Published: June 27, 2007 2 small white nectarines or white peaches 1 small green pear or green apple 1 small navel orange 1 bottle cava, moscato d'Asti or other sparkling wine 1 3/4 cups apple juice 1 1/3 cups Cointreau 1 cup club soda. Slice fruit into thin bite-size pieces. Place in large pitcher. Pour in sparkling wine, apple juice and Cointreau. If possible, refrigerate an hour or two to draw out sweetness and floral aromas of fruit. Add club soda, and stir. Spoon some fruit pieces into glasses filled with ice, and pour. Yield: 8 cocktails.

More on Drinks for Memories.... Drinks for Memories Iced Coffee ?, no sweat. Chapter 1: I Drank the Water Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert The Cherries of Persia A Taste of Freedom Dry Dock It's Not

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

"Ratatouille", el ratón cocinero.

DINING & WINE

A Rat With a Whisk and a Dream By KIM SEVERSON Published: June 13, 2007 Correction Appended

Deborah Coleman/Pixar KITCHEN VERITÉ? Remy the rat in the animated film "Ratatouille."

FOR someone who works in a restaurant, watching a rat try to become a chef might seem like just another day at work. For movie audiences, a rat with culinary aspirations might be more appealing. Especially if it's a rat that the chef Thomas Keller helped teach to cook. The rat is Remy, the animated French star of "Ratatouille," the summer offering from Pixar Animation Studios that opens June 29. While earlier Pixar projects centered on child-friendly subjects like bugs and monsters, this one takes viewers deep into the world of French haute cuisine. The story is a classic underdog tale that leans heavily on Cyrano de Bergerac. Remy, a food-obsessed rat with an exceptional sense of smell, dreams of becoming a chef. To get there, he teams up with Linguini, a clueless garbage boy at Gusteau's, a once-great Parisian restaurant that has fallen into disarray since the death of its chef, Auguste Gusteau. Remy teaches the lowly kitchen worker to cook dishes that impress even the powerful food critic Anton Ego, who is given voice by the actor Peter O'Toole. Although the story line has its charms, the precisely rendered detail of a professional kitchen will appeal to the food-obsessed. The Pixar crew took cooking classes, ate at notable restaurants in Paris and worked alongside Mr. Keller at the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif. "As a former actor and dancer, I have spent a lot of time in restaurants, but I had no idea of that vast difference between France and America, and especially the three-star restaurants in Paris," said Brad Lewis, the producer.

Deborah Coleman/Pixar TWO GOOD NOSES Filmmakers followed the chef Thomas Keller for some kitchen scenes.

The spectacle of French service was of particular note, and the film's examination of how it can fade was influenced by studying La Tour d'Argent, a centuries-old Paris restaurant that lost two of its three Michelin stars. The cheese course in the film is copied directly from the one at the Parisian restaurant Hélène Darroze. Gusteau's is an amalgam of several restaurants in Paris, including Guy Savoy, Le Train Bleu and Taillevent. At a staff meeting at Taillevent, Mr. Lewis finally understood the intensity of high-level service. "They had recorded that one woman took 10 minutes between her first sip of white Burgundy and her second," he said. "So they concluded that the wine was too cold and were going to adjust accordingly." The intricacies of wine service in the movie are but one detail dedicated eaters will appreciate. The curve of the copper-bottomed sauce pans, the steam from a pot of soup or even the way slices of leek fall off a knife are expertly rendered. The characters that inhabit Gusteau's kitchen are drawn with precision, too. There is the gruff cook who might have killed a man. The only woman in the kitchen epitomizes stereotypical French rudeness. But she eventually warms to the garbage boy, taking time to explain that getting the freshest produce requires a bribe and that the only way to tell if a baguette is fresh is by cracking off a piece and listening to the sound of the crust. No character understands what it is to be a great chef better than Remy, the rat, who is furious that Gusteau's image is being used to sell frozen food on American TV. When the late chef, who appears to Remy as a guiding spirit, suggests that anyone can cook, Remy's response will be applauded by those who follow chefs the way others follow baseball players. "Well, yeah, anyone can," the rat says. "That doesn't mean anyone should." The team at Pixar, which is owned by Disney, worked with Mr. Keller and other chefs to create a menu for the restaurant. Michael Warch, manager of the film's sets and layout department, also holds a culinary degree. He used the kitchens at the Pixar studios in the San Francisco Bay Area to recreate dishes for the animators to study. Throughout the film, the characters work on dishes like steamed pike with butter, braised fennel and heirloom potatoes or grilled petit filet mignon with oxtail and baby onion ragout topped with truffled bordelaise and shaved Perigord truffle. The idea was to create food so authentic that people would leave the theater with an urge to cook and eat. But it turns out that computer-generated food can look much scarier than a computer-generated bug or car.

Disney Enterprises/Pixar Animation Studios "Ratatouille."

"We didn't want something to look really photo-real," said Sharon Calahan, the director of photography and lighting. "If it starts looking too real, it starts getting pretty disturbing." A scallop, for example, needs ridges and bumps to look realistic. But add too many and the shellfish becomes grotesque. Bread, particularly the soft crumb inside, was difficult to create because it is so familiar. So were green vegetables, for similar reasons. "Lettuce was really challenging," Ms. Calahan said. The human eye is particularly sensitive to shades of green because there are so many variations in nature. Lettuce can easily appear too minty or a jarring lime green. "Your brain knows what color lettuce is," she said. In fact, the filmmakers said that almost all the food was a challenge, even the bits that were rotting in a compost heap. "It was actually more difficult to make the food look realistically bad," she said. "The trick was figuring which parts of the food to exaggerate." Mr. Keller, who has lent his name to a companion children's cookbook for the film and is the voice of a restaurant patron, helped guide the culinary education of the Pixar team and subsequently became friends with Mr. Lewis, the producer. The chef's handiwork is most evident in the final dish, the one on which the entire plot hangs. The dish is the movie's namesake, and needs to be so special it will impress the restaurant critic. Mr. Keller cooked a fancy layered version of ratatouille called confit byaldi. "We had to think about what would make the food transformed," Mr. Keller said. "What would transport him back to his childhood in a Proustian sort of way." With the Pixar team recording his every move, Mr. Keller had a last-minute inspiration as he took a palette knife to the vegetables. "When I picked up a layer of the byaldi and it compacted, I realized at that moment how the dish would come together." The solution was fanning the vegetables out accordion-style. Mr. Keller, who describes "Ratatouille" as "extraordinarily clever," said he is impressed with the film's dedication to kitchen detail. But he is more taken with its ultimate message: in a nutshell, don't listen to anyone but yourself. "It's about somebody who is willing to take the risk, to take the gamble on doing something regardless of what the critic is going to say about it," Mr. Keller said. And he suggests people focus on the message, not the rodent. "It's not so much about a rat. It's about ideals." Julia Moskin contributed reporting. Correction: June 20, 2007 An article last Wednesday about the animated film "Ratatouille" misstated the role of Brad Lewis. He is the producer, not the director.

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Síntomas.

CÓMO SABER SI ALGUIEN PRESENTA SÍNTOMAS GAY? SÍNTOMA NIVEL GAY OBSERVACIONES Llegar a los treinta años y no tener panza. Seguro que es gay. No se diga más. Chupar paletas.   ¡Mariconada! Las únicas cosas que un hombre de verdad puede chupar es precisamente esa parte de las mujeres que se están imaginando. Tener un gato.   Sólo un homosexual consumado tendría un gato. Un gato es como un perro pero en versión maricón, se lava con su propia lengua, come pescado y nunca se emborracha. Es decir que el hombre que vive solo con un gato en su casa, vive en una profunda relación gay. Sólo fíjense: A un perro se le llama con dignidad masculina, "Perro cabrón, venga para acá" o "váyase pinche perro", pero a un gato... "Bsss-bsss-bsss, kiti kiti kiti, ven bonito, tan lindo mi gatito". No ir de caza o de pesca porque no hay baño   ¡gay! Un verdadero hombre caga donde sea. Pedir café descafeinado, café con leche descremada o cosa similares:   Maricón Café es café, debe ser fuerte... ¡es masculino! Las únicas cosas que se le pueden añadir al café son coñac y whisky, todo lo demás es cosa de nenas. Saber el nombre de más de cuatro pasteles   ¡gay! Un hombre sólo conoce lo suficiente para desayunar en el bar. Dónde se ha visto que un verdadero hombre entre en un bar y diga "disculpe, me podría poner dos porciones de " lemon pie" y una de " brownies ". con 20 equipos en primera división y 25 jugadores en cada uno... a quién le queda sitio en la memoria para recordar los nombres de los pasteles. Conducir con las dos manos     Es muy gay Si los " cowboys " consiguen lazar a los toros con una sola mano... por qué un hombre precisa de dos manos para agarrar el volante. Las dos manos al volante sólo en dos momentos: rebasar o tocar bocina, el resto la mano derecha debe estar libre para poder sintonizar la radio, hablar por   teléfono fumar, comer un sándwich, y agarrar la cerveza. Le encanta bailar   ¡Maricón! Los hombres sólo bailan por necesidad de arrimarse a una morra, pero de ahí a que les encante... Conocer los nombres de actores y actrices de moda y en qué películas o novelas actuaron Es de nenas Un hombre de verdad sólo se acuerda que a ese tipo lo vio en otra película cortando cabezas con una espada en cada mano.     Se fija qué bien o qué mal se viste una mujer y puede recordar de qué color era su vestido. ¡maricooo! Un hombre sólo recuerda que buena estaba.    Revisar la fecha de caducidad en los productos.     ¡gay, gay y recontra gay! ¡Hágase hombre no sea gay! Un hombre de a deveras es inmune a los productos caducos. Recibe y reenvía e-mails que hablan de la amistad, el amor, la ternura y otras   porquerías que para colmo están ilustrados con fotos de niños, flores angelitos o perros, y al final te amenaza que si no lo haces te va a pasar algo terrible. GAY ENFERMO! Demuestren su hombría y manden esto a sus  amigos. ¡No sean GAY!

Pasarelas Masculinas. Milán, primavera 2008.

DESIGN & FASHION Fashion Review

Looking Like a Billion Bucks. By GUY TREBAY Published: June 28, 2007 MILAN

Luca Bruno/Associated Press EASY STREET A nattily tailored jacket from Valentino.

HEDGE funds, hedge funds, hedge funds," Richard David Story, the editor of Departures, the magazine for American Express premium cardholders, said before the Ferragamo show on Sunday when asked to account for the current mood in men's fashion and what looks like newly set markers for giddy excess. To judge from all the $700 cotton poplin trousers (Bottega Veneta), $250 flip-flops (Hermès) and $20,000 satchels in matte tobacco crocodile (Tod's) on offer, the fractional-jet-share crowd has coffers so deep that there'll be plenty left over for chronographs or John Currin paintings. Whether these customers are real or imagined, the idealized notion of them appeared to dominate many designers' offerings for spring 2008, all pitched to a guy with both a high net worth and a 30-inch waist.

Matteo Bazzi/European Press Agency NEW DANDIES In a mood of bouyant optimism, designers in Milan showed their men's collections for spring/summer 2008. Above, Giorgio Armani.

"Preppy deluxe" is how one editor characterized Tomas Maier's solid collection of high-end slouch-wear for Bottega Veneta: glazed linen three-piece suits; rumpled jackets with zippered detachable sleeves; and soft bags in crocodile, ostrich and deerskin, which, the designer indicated, "reflect the careless elegance of the clothing." As in seasons past, Mr. Maier's clothes were an elaboration of the insouciant formality that characterizes good Neapolitan tailoring. Still, they could also be mistaken for a billionaire's version of the stuff from a J. Peterman catalog. That some version of that Bottega Veneta man — lithe, young, carefree in his moneyed assurance — seemed to be everywhere said something about the generally buoyant economic mood in Milan. His spirit was to be seen in Frida Giannini's slick and well-orchestrated show for Gucci, which presented a tautened version of that same fellow and put him in graphic suits with madras cloth checks rendered in black and white, and trousers that sat just above the pubic bone and biker jackets with grommets and shoes with lethally pointed toes.

Stefano Rellandini/Reuters Gucci.

He appeared again in shiny trench coats, knife-slim suits and a muted palette at the Versace show, designed this season by the Russian-born Alexandre Plokhov, formerly of Cloak. He was spotted at Roberto Cavalli's unexpectedly restrained show held in a cavernous disco near Linate Airport wearing not the leopard spots and junky rocker paraphernalia one expects from this designer, but instead the subdued suits and the slouchy suede driving shoes favored by the Maserati crowd. Another avatar of the hedge-fund hottie turned out at Valentino's brand-consistent presentation, notable as usual for natty Roman tailoring styled in a way that is often more than a little bit campy. Wasn't that double-breasted white jacket nipped at the waist once a uniform of sorts among the high-end gigolos populating the piazzetta in Capri? Mr. Bigbucks was here again at the Salvatore Ferragamo show, conjured this time wearing sharp-edged suits of white cotton (with accompanying gloves), handsome tweedlike cotton blazers or faintly feminine evening clothes (a kind of shiny hoodie) that suggested a time in the future when it will be the man who needs help with his zipper before leaving the house.

Chris Moore/Catwalking/Getty Images Bottega Veneta.

"It's more cool now to be refined," said Massimiliano Giornetti, the young Ferragamo designer. "It's cool to wear a jacket again on the weekend and in the evening and in your spare time." It is particularly cool if you happen to be in Milan when, in a not-altogether-accountable spirit of optimism, the city cracks open the oaken doors to its fabled palaces and cloisters and turns them into party rooms. EASILY the most aesthetically charged shows of the week were at Prada and Jil Sander, both labels by designers of intellectual agility, technical know-how and aesthetic quirkiness. Raf Simons at Sander recently narrowed his already-slim silhouette to the point where his models look like calligraphic brush strokes. His palette this season was cool and maritime: the pale greens of dunes covered in beach grass, the flat blank blue of a Low Country sky. Somehow, though, while declining to flout the visual vocabulary created by the label's founding designer — often mischaracterized as minimalism — Mr. Simons has managed to articulate a visual idiom of his own. It is terse, direct and, as probably befits the son of a professional soldier, disciplined.

Chris Moore/Catwalking/Getty Images Jil Sander.

On Saturday night a dinner was held for Nicolas Ghesquiere of Balenciaga beneath Tiepolo's hallucinatory and superpopulated ceiling at the Palazzo Clerici. This was followed the next evening by a vast alfresco feast whose host was Franca Sozzani, the editor of Italian Vogue, honoring the painter Julian Schnabel, who is enjoying a retrospective here. The dinner drew from the worlds of fashion and politics and also from what is left of the local aristocracy, and was served at a series of long tables set inside the arcade of what at one time was a hospital for sufferers of the plague. For his first men's wear show in Milan, the Belgian designer Dries van Noten took over the Caryatid Room at the Palazzo Reale, illuminated it with 1,500 candles and served guests plates of pasta before offering them a moody selection of clothes shown on models who paraded like sleepwalkers through a low-lying bank of manufactured fog. There were diaphanous raincoats of parachute silk and side-belted blouson shirts that vaguely recalled Russian Tea Room waiters. There were also boxing shorts and judo trousers, remade in matte satin and jewel colors that, however romantic they looked in the setting, would not be much help if our man found himself looking to get lucky or, for that matter, trying to flag down a taxi at 3 a.m. If, on the other hand, he had it in mind to slip on an apricot-colored parachute-silk skimmer, hop into a time machine and set the dial for New Haven circa 1984, he might glide to a graceful landing at a Yale seminar where earnest brainy sorts were ardently discussing something quaint like the butch-femme dyad or the future of men.

Antonio Calanni/Associated Press Salvatore Ferragamo.

Gender studies, of course, have gone the way of the dodo. Yet like that bygone creature they have an insistent way of insinuating themselves into our consciousness and our collective dreams. "The concept of duality so dear to psychoanalysis and art in general," read a press handout at Versace. "This is the challenge facing the Versace man in the coming spring/summer 2008 season." You don't say. Even before the Versace man got there, many of us were puzzling over what to make of the tension between masculine and feminine dualities in sartorial self-expression and also wondering why it is that, for a lot of designers, Peter Pan seems to be the ideal man. How, for example, do you rationalize the success of Thom Browne, who won a men's wear award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2006 and who was recently hired by Brooks Brothers to help revamp the brand? You can't argue with the influence Mr. Browne's clothes have had on the industry, although he was surely not the first to make suits that suggested a Pee-wee Herman romp along Savile Row. At a garden party staged for a pictorial in the July/August issue of Departures, Euan Rellie, the husband of the fashion gadfly Lucy Sykes, is seen wearing a Thom Browne suit that has all of that designer's trademark details: cropped jacket piped at the collar, lapel, hem and pocket; shirttails left hanging; bow tie. A caption identifies Mr. Rellie as an investment banker, and one would certainly have to be making a bundle to afford a get-up that cost $6,170, not including underwear, socks and shoes. Yet far from embodying a model of fiscal authority or contemporary chic, Mr. Rellie comes across in the picture as the man hired by the caterers to make balloon animals.

Antonio Calanni/Associated Press Prada.

With the notable exceptions of Dsquared and Armani, labels whose designers are unabashed in their appetite for manly types, a lot of shows this week cast models that looked as goofy as Mr. Rellie did and also far too young. This is probably as good a place as any to remark that, by returning to the clean tailoring, body-hugging lines and gimmick-free forms of his early career, Giorgio Armani produced his best show in a long time, one that had nothing to do with our general cultural infantilism, or what sometimes seems like a plot by the fashion cabal to get the Centrum Silver set to relinquish all hopes of growing old stylishly and to accept the inevitable orthotic inserts and elastic waists. No sentimentalist, Miuccia Prada nevertheless remains a romantic, her work driven by her highly singular notion of social engagement in all kinds of media (art, architecture, music, clothes). It may seem like a far-fetched assertion to make about a designer who turns out a collection built around boiler suits, mad scientist lab coats, pajama sets in muted floral patterns, and skinny shirts over skinnier trousers in patterns that collide nearsighted geeks, but Ms. Prada has once again come up with her own alternative to the scrawny, unconvincing bad boys that have dominated men's fashion since Hedi Slimane first saw Pete Doherty play. It is not exactly that she makes emo fashion. But that's the general idea.

Multimedia Slide Show

Copyright by the New York Times 2007

Cerveza en el desierto iraquí.

DINING & WINE

Forbidden Pleasure in the Desert By DEXTER FILKINS Published: June 27, 2007

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

WE'D walked together down a road lined with craters. Walked slowly, of course. Looking for wires, animal carcasses, that sort of thing. The telltale signs of hidden bombs. It was a sweltering Iraqi morning, with the mist of the Euphrates infiltrating our lungs. Later on, the captain regaled me with stories. We were both from Florida. His best tale concerned a tactic his men had devised to search Iraqi villages. A blond woman was in the unit he led, and all she had to do upon entering an Iraqi village was stand atop a Bradley fighting vehicle and pull off her helmet, letting her golden locks tumble to her shoulders. Within minutes — blond hair being a thing of fascination in Iraq — much of the male population would be gathered round the Bradley. The Americans would then quietly search the village for guns. Worked every time, the captain said. We had a great laugh. The talk turned to beer. If you could just get us a couple of cans, the captain said. He looked longingly at me. The captain hadn't had a drink since he had arrived in Iraq, he said; none of his troops had. General Order No. 1, as it is called, decrees, among other things, that no American soldier shall consume alcohol in a war zone. Alone in the Iraqi desert, cold beer is something soldiers dream about. Traveling around Iraq was still easy in 2003; so was buying alcohol. A couple of nights later, with a case of Carlsberg in the trunk, a photographer and I drove at high speed across the black Iraqi desert and pulled into the base. The captain came out to meet us. We'd put the beer in a black garbage bag. He cradled the sack like treasure. "Oh, you guys are great," the captain said, hustling it away. "Anything you want. Anything." I never saw the captain after that. My only regret is that I didn't share one of those beers with him.

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Copyright by the New York Times 2007