Chelsea Nabe Suggestions for January 2012

What's this? You'll just have to check out item 6 below!

Here's a copy of the little neighborly missive I send to a casual e-list of folks who live a 0.1 mile radius from my digs in Chelsea. But before I start, a couple of words from my sponsor (me): 

• I'm teaching the following classes at the very affordable Manhattan yoga studio (almost an oxymoron) YoGanesh on 23st and 7th Ave,  Friday 7.30pm, Sat 8.30am, Thur 10am. $15 drop in, $12 with a 10-class card. Cheap, choosy and healthy! 

• I JUST got done editing my DVD of Peruvian kids and orphans, it's just waiting on a final deet. So if you have a spare 90 seconds, I'd love you to watch the trailer and pass it around, because it will really help the kids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-GYrrZf7xs
  More story here. 

So what to eat (and more)? 

1. I'm celebrating emerging from DVD hell by eating the incomparable eggplant puree toast $4 at Company or "Co." on 24th and 9th. Make that the canellini bean toast as well. Dammit, and the ribollita soup $8.  That's assuming can get a place at the bar because you'll never get a spot otherwise, unless you go at blue plate (5pm?) hour. If I can't elbow a hipster off the end, even with the help of the affable bartender Walter, I'll head to the less hip but decent New York Burger Company for their Shake-Shack comparative mini burger, $3.50. Failing that,  maybe cereal over the sink? Scrolling back a bit ... who needs a line in summer, let along winter? NYBC's roll is even brioche-style so I can't see why SS gets all the hype (oh of course, marketing ...) 

2. Three Tarts on 20th and 9th got an amazing amount of TV press for their home made marshmallows recently. Next Wed I will be helping film some "reactions on the street" for their site. We're focussing on Chelsea so people from all over will hopefully come to the nabe. If you want to be in the videos for a completely impromptu experience AND have luscious real fruit mallows popped your mouth, ping me. Meeting 12.30 next Wed. Stimulating the local economy one hundred calories at a time!

3. The slightly chintzy-looking looking WARNING: brace yourself before clicking on this website: Chelsea Royal Care Pharmacy OK have you recovered? on 9th between 19th and 20th is actually a really great pharmacy (despite their website). Apparently they deal in difficult onconcology and HIV-related drugs for way less money than the big pharmacies - they even cut me a super deal on a prescription when my job and insurance were eliminated recently. Support neighborly places with a neighborly attitude! Run by a Russian pharmacist called Aleksandr, who is a notary public and charges $2 for that service. There's even a color copier, saving you a trip to Staples. People on Yelp really seem to like them.

4. Did I ever mention my terrific, painless dentist on 23rd and 9th, Alexander Galperin? A bunch of his Yelp reviews got taken down for no good reason, but fortunately, my review remained.

5. There is a sensational  grilled cheese with caramelized onion sandwich served at Chelsea Market Baskets right now, for $6.50. It's really a ton of calories but you'll burn it off eventually.  I bought a bottle of the caramelized onions and it worked OK with lowfat cheese and healthy bread. Um, sort of. 

6. There's a new place called Ports Coffee and Tea on 23rd between 7th and 8th that serves three really excellent cookies you must try unless sugar is against your religion - a raspberry hazelnut, a fennel and raisin, and a soft ginger and applesauce. $2 each, and pictured above.  The coffee is the famous Stumptown from Brooklyn. They use the outrageously indulgent Mast Bros chocolate in their mochas and hot chocs. Well, indulgent if you consider Mast Bros chocolate retails for $7.50+ a bar, compared to my standing favorite - Trader Joe's 85% Tumaco Dark Chocolate Lover's Bar for under $2. However, for me, the best traditional cocoa is still the size small Chocolate Chaud at La Grainne $3.75 - in size large they seem to get the proportions all wrong... 

7. If you've a spare $75, the wacky Sleep No More "immersion theater" show is STILL playing at the McKittrick Hotel in the Gallery District. It's a good Valentine's treat, although best experienced if you don't cling to your friend and go spook yourself solo in the labyrinth of rooms and corridors. You can go across the road after to Ovest and have a pretty OK pizza. Read my take on my ChelseaGallerista blog.

8.  My NEW FAVORITE, SECRET PLACE: Hotel Americano, on 27th between 9th and 10th. I like to go there for breakfast after teaching at YoGanesh 8.30-9.45am Sat. It's undiscovered so far, so no lines and nonsense yet. Truly, you feel like you're in Barcelona. The green smoothie $5 is outstanding, you'll never drink an Odwalla or Naked again. There is a giant photo montage of a young Obama smoking a spliff (among other things). Prices reasonable, considering it's a boutique hotel.  Just don't go to the Dream Hotel for brunch over on 17th to eat. Truly, truly, awful and truly, truly overpriced. 

10. I still love the Tart Tartin and both Le Grainne and La Lunchonette.  It's my benchmark dessert, much like I judge Pad Thai - or even better, Pad Woon Sen in Thai restaurants. So simple, yet so refined. Cookshop's desserts have gone way downhill in every respect. Just as well, we really don't need the calories. 

11. Popping down to Chelsea Market, I have to mention Sarabeth's raspberry bread pudding $5. Don't eat it with a friend unless they are getting their own. You will say, "let's split it" and regret that you did. You will snatch it away from under her suspended fork and run to the nearest exit.

12. Best blow out place: Buddakan, which I've talked about before. Despite their main room being reminiscent of the mansion in the orgy scene of Eyes Wide Shut (sans the raunch), it's a sensational and curiously attitude-free zone on the edge of Meatpacking. One can only imagine that the owner, a Stephen Starr, has told his staff that the #1 rule if making money (and thus keeping them paid) is to make people welcome. What a concept!  I suspect the very dark lighting might help melt the nylon parkas, baseball caps and Talbots blazers into the shadows, but I'm exaggerating here for effect -  generally people like to dress up and it's worth it. It's the one place I'd bother wearing my impossibly high, gold tie-up Christian Louboutin shoes (bought third hand of course, from New and Almost New in the East Village). Monumental, surreal, and great, fairly reasonable food to boot. Don't order the chow fun though, it's too soggy.  We Chinese know about these things.

13. Clothing. If you want something unique and original that is a zillion miles away from the Usual Stuff Inc I love LingoNYC on 19th St at 8th Ave. I think I have about eight things from there and I get compliments all the time.  For the originality it offers, the prices are reasonable. For cheap and not so choosy, you'd have to head to say, TJ Maxx et al

14. Cafe Zemi. Best Pad Thai (esp shrimp or tofu), Tuscan Grilled Veggie platter with brown rice, Moo Shoo Chicken, Cobb Salad, Cold noodles, baby back ribs, braised duck, stir fry ginger fish ... basically these people really know how to cook and execute Asian bistro standards for around $10.
As far as drinks go, the Empress Tea with lychee, fresh mint, lemon, soda and gin is divine, assuming you're a drinker. I'm not, and I can're remember what happened next.

15. This just in from my London Terrace Nabe Dana: "Peter and Magic Fingers  is an AMAZING massage person - I've gone to him while healing from surgeries and other assorted complications. It's a hole in the wall Tui Na type place on 9th ave +  is $48/ hour. Can't beat that!

212-868-5865 - Magic Fingers/ New Relax Body Spa 

346 9th Ave (29-30th), Next to Orchid Nail Spa. Neon lights outside. You need to be buzzed in. 

Tell him Dana sent you, he's my pal! Oh + buy 10 get one free!"

14. Scroll back through my previous posts for other suggestions not mentioned here. And remember, as my mother said, if you don't support good things, one day they won't be there!

Until I stumble on the next cool thing around the corner ... support your nabe, or the things you like won't be there one day! 

<$3: The Tuck Shop - A $3 sausage roll that rocks PLUS It's Tim Tam Time!

Landing the most scrumptious sausage roll at the Tuck Shop NY



The Tuck Shop Revisited for Tim Tams, Mint Slice, and a runny meat pie

The Tuck Shop featured in my "Best Job In The World" application
The Tuck Shop? Never 'eard of it!

+++

HOW DO you make a sausage roll? Put it on a hill and push it.

That's the very clean joke about this snack from my kindergarden days, when the local Aussie "tuck shop" or school canteen dispensed greasy, fatty pies, pasties and sausage rolls to a nutritionally unenlightened public.

Oh how we loved that crap.

The pie - something that has never taken off in the USA except in the form of a 'pot pie' - was a pastry case filled with drippy, peppery mince in a brown gravy strong on Worcestershire sauce. How did you eat it? Peel off the pastry lid and eat that first. The using your index fingers, scoop out the filling and suck it off your fingers, ouching at the temperature. Finally, hoe into the pastry base.

The pastie (pronounced parse-tee) - no doubt a Brit hangover from a convict heritage - resembled the modern empanada with a bland stew as a filling. The healthier of the three, due to the presence of a 1/4" cube each of carrot, potato and celery.

The sausage roll - not my favorite snack due to its unabashed greasiness - was basically a cylinder of salty, peppery pork mince wrapped in flaky pastry and served hot. To eat it, you peel off the pastry first, then eat the denuded pork cylinder.

The sausage roll that rocks - sage and flesh of ex-pig. Vegetarians look away - to the chick pea version.

Fast forward 30 years to my talk at the 5 Borough Bike Club in NY, and the organizer Barry Hartglass has sourced a platter of Aussie food (sans the Fosters) in honor of my Aussiedom. Where from? The Tuck Shop, a dingo burrow on the lower east side of Manhattan.

The pork and sage sausage rolls, a gourmet interpretation of the original log of saturated fat, left a taste in my mouth that had me salivating at the memory for a whole year before I was finally able to return to NY and visit the source. I think I scarfed three in quick succession before, during and after my talk. No wonder no one could understand what I was blathering let along decipher my accent. It was juicy and tender, light and fragrant, savory and scrumptious all at once.

And here I now stood, in the Tuck Shop itself, purse poised in anticipation.

But which roll? There was a chick pea one too, for those who refuse to eat the flesh of dead animal.

"I think you're after the original," said Neil, the Oirish co-owner who opened the business because "there was already enough Irish bars." The reprise did not disappoint. In a bulimic moment I also scarfed the chick pea version, then a lamb and vegetable pie ($5), then a vanilla slice ($4), all washed down with a perfect none-too-sweet home made ginger beer ($2). All shared - but not exactly half-half - with a friend.

The best part? A mere $3 investment for the signature dish. A couple of regulars sat at the bar, one brandishing the SPEND LESS edition of the New York Magazine.

"So how is the recession affecting the Tuck Shop?"

"Business is booming," said Neil, who is resisting raising the price of that nirvanic sausage roll in the name of lowering the nation's obesity level.

The Tim Tam run.

Later, I re-visited the store and stocked up on packets of Tim Tams and Mint Slice, the Aussie interpretation of a luxe, chocolate covered cookie. Called 'chocolate biscuits' Downunder, they bear no relation to the doughy, anaemic white flour biscuit Upover, and impress overseas guests to high heaven in the same way that packets of odd little Japanese wrapped sweets impress Gaijins.

Tim Tams are the King of Affordable Treats downunder. It's a chocolate cookie sandwich with a distinctive break an flavor that's evident from the moment your front incisors shatter the thin, chocolate shell, descend through the sublayers of crisp chocolate cookie before reaching the core, a thick layer that is at once truffle, fudge and ganache, yet none of these. The taste is distinctive - honey, chocolate, vanilla, burned sugar, yet not too sweet ... who knows what it is? It should absolutely be eaten from the refrigerator, to fully experience the unique 'break' (distinctly different from the ho-hum Oreo) and subdued sweetness that  chilling it affords.

I admit as an Aussie I was a little disturbed to see the American Pepperidge Farms logo on the packets, it being the new distributor in the USA. My first thought was, oh no, I bet they're now loaded with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (trans fat) or high fructose corn syrup, truly evil mainstays of most processed food in the USA. In Australia, we use plain old sugar - we grow a lot of it. But Niall assured me it was the original recipe, just re-branded.

But rather than have it stand like another soldier in the ranks of Pepperidge products, why not be clever and leave the USA branding off, promote it as an exotic downunder Aussie treat capitalizing on its heritage of addiction and rake in the cash. Why not take a leaf from another iconic Aussie treat, Homer Hudson ice cream. The brand imagery stayed folksy and funky when in reality, it was a big, bland Unilever stoking the freezers behind the scenes. If Pepperidge would pick the brains of Tim Tam's Antipodean Addicts downunder they would uncover a gold mine of marketing strategy.

Because Tim Tams are no ordinary cookie. They are that strange and elusive combination of a premium, yet affordable supermarket aisle product, and ironically something you never actually tire of, like fresh squeezed orange juice. It is well known that sitting down with a packet of Tim Tams in front of a television is dangerous - you will systematically demolish the entire packet then go looking for more. Just read some of the rapturous remarks about this Aussie diet destroyer on the Saatchi Lovemarks site.

I haven't ranted on about Mint Slice to the same degree, because they have a stronger, sweeter, richer taste - you simply can't eat as many and so rank lower on the addiction scale.

OK, back to the hot stuff.

So how do you make a sausage rock? Roll on to the Tuck Shop!

www.tuckshopnyc.com



Above: Owner Lincoln with my Bike Friday tikit - which slotted neatly under a bar stool ...

60cents-$5 Microdesserts @ Three Tarts, NY

$5 Chai Greek Yogurt Cup trying not to eat it too fast ...

My folding bike experiment, tikit on Trial, included this visit to the Three Tarts:




I visit the Three Tarts almost as often as the bathroom but I can assure you there's no direct causality ...

The antithesis of supersize me, ThreeTarts is 'microsize me' with its tiny, utterly original, coin-sized cookies, tarts, muffins and parfaits, meticulously baked and priced to empty the small change in your pocket.

You will find concoctions here that you will find nowhere else. Here are the absolute standout numbers in my book:

1. The Chocolate Lovely - two superfine, super thin, super dark (almost black) chocolate cookies with a dark ganache filling. There is a delayed reaction as the chocolate hits your palate then creeps slowly over it, intensifying as it goes. Wow. What a way to spend 60 cents. Shape changes from bat to penguin to megaphone depending on the whim of the Japanese patisserie meister. You'll probably eat two.

2. Greek yoghurt cup. This breakfast/lunch/dessert is a total knockout. Creamy Greek yoghurt topped with pistacho, pumpkin seed and walnut something or other and bottomed with a sweet and spicy chai syrup something or other. Phenomenal combination. Not a single person who has tried it at my insistence has reacted with anything other than 'oh wow.' $5 but worth every spoonful.

3. The fig, caramelized onion and goat's cheese tartlet. An unbelieveable taste combination. The sweet of the fig, the salt of the cheese, the sweet and salt of the onions, and the buttery crispness of the short biscuit base. $3.80.

4. My everyday favorite (and because I couldn't afford to eat 2. and 3. every meal although I could give it a damn good swing) is the little apple tart. A tiny, poker-chip sized tart with high sides filled with good old fashioned, perfectly spiced fresh apple puree. Three little bites of heaven. $1.55

5. Outstanding biscotti - Just the right amount of nut, sweet, break and crumble. 60 cents.

6. The hot chocolate - very good, and on par with the well priced (under $4.50, NOT the exorbitant $8 kind) rich hot chocolates offered by the likes Amy's and Fairway. It's basically solid chocolate melted into hot milk.

Then there are other items like the jewel panacottas, the delicate marshmallows and more regular trufffles. The banana and green tea ice cream sandwiches were my initial favorite but I find the cake sides are a bit too cakey for me, and the wrapping unwieldy. $4.50

The co-owner told me that when they first opened, the owner of the equally impressive (for different things) La Bergamot came over and said, "I consider this war" on account of the truffles that both establishments offer.

My reaction: "Did you lean over and say 'and we're about to make a killing'?"

This is the indulgence food of a modern age: highly creative, right-sized and right-priced.




The Three Tarts
164 9th Ave
(between 19th St & 20th St)
New York, NY 10011
(212) 462-4392
www.3tarts.com

Free Monday Nights: Howard Williams Jazz Orchestra, The Garage NYC

Monday is apparently muso's night off, and here in Manhattan some of the best Broadway musicians get together and jam "for fun". The 16-piece (looks a lot bigger from the wings!) Howard Williams Orchestra plays Monday nites 7-10pm at The Garage - a really cool and jazzy multi-tiered space.

Roger, whose brother pays the double bass in the band, says it has been a tradition at the space for 15 years.

"My brother carpools in from Philly, every Monday. If musicians can't make it, they have to find a stand in."

So fun it may be, but this is serious. I'm not actually a fan of this kind of jazz, but hearing and seeing it live like this has a presence and power that is hard to convey. I've been quite a few times, so I take that back - I guess I am a fan.

There is food, but the menu is somewhat pricey unless you stick to a fairly quesadilla or salad for around $10-15.

There's no cover, but please support musicians and businesses like this by being a good consumer and tipper if you visit.

http://www.garagerest.com
99 7th Ave SOUTH (not 7th Ave), near Christopher St, with a subway stop a block away.

Pretty much free yoga in Chelsea and beyond

Free yoga on Pier 64 offered by Chelsea Piers Fitness Center.

Yoga in NYC doesn't come cheap. Classes hover around $18 unless you buy some kind of package. But here are some options in Chelsea and a little further, that can tide you over 'til you get that Wall Street job and can afford a membership at Equinox and wherever else you please ...

Free summer yoga at Pier 64, offered by Chelsea Piers Fitness Center
August/Sept only, before the snow comes in ...

Donation only Community Class at Laughing Lotus, 19th and 6th Ave, M-F, 2.30pm-3.45pm. Ongoing.
For Summer only, Lotus also offer a free Wed 7-8pm class on a grassy knoll near 15th and the West Side Highway.

Easy Yoga with the Galfromdownunder, Chelsea Rec Center, 25th bet 9th and 10th Ave. Tuesdays 6-7pm.
Ongoing. Yes folks, this is my completely free, 'tude free class, part of Boomberg's ShapeUpNYC initiative - you don't have to be a center member to attend, make sure you tell them that if the front desk gives you grief.

Easy Senior Yoga with the Galfromdownunder, Hudson Guild Community Center, 9th Ave at 17th St, Manhattan. Tuesdays 11am-noon.
Ongoing. My completely free, 'tude free Senior class - you have to be 55+ to gain admission to the center.

The Sivinanda Yoga Center ,  24th between 7th and 8th Ave,  has relatively affordable $10-12 classes daily. None of the teachers are paid - it is karma or "selfless yoga. Wonderful, donationa-appreciated Kirtans (meditation, chanting, discourse) Wed and Sunday - a real, 'tude-free oasis in the Manhattan maelstrom.

Yoga to the People: The original donate-what-you-can-but-$10-is-nice yoga studio, with several locations. The one with 3 floors in the village does get mighty crowded ...

Are there more?

$10 seats: World Class dance diversity at the JOYCE THEATER, Chelsea, Manhattan

The Joyce, a neighborhood dance theater in Chelsea, Manhattan,  reminds me of Dr Who's Tardis: a modest, low key, retro frontage that opens up into a giant internal world of global dance entertainment. It's not that the theater is huge - the tremendous variety of shows simply makes it seem that way.

In recent times they've started offering $10 seats, thereby putting world class dance within reach of a huge and recession-strapped audience. And if you've never been to a dance performance and experienced the psychological boost it gives you, you're in for a treat.

$10 buys you seats in the very front row, "the bleeding nose seats", where, unless you're tall or sneak a cushion inside, you will possibly see the show from the dancer's ankles up. But choreographers make sire a lot of action happens above the ankles, so for the amazing price, it's a no-brainer.

I might be the only person on the world that believes watching dance actually has a positive physical effect on your body - even though you're just sitting in a seat. Having spent an hour or more immersed in  a display of the human body moving with levity and grace, you actually float up out of your seat and walk different. I remember watching mogul skiing championships on TV for hours, then experiencing a boost in confidence when I stepped onto skis (and I'm no skier). So you can consider the $10 like a visit to a dance-exercise class. Well, an adjunct at least.

I absolutely love the retro neon sign, which I sincerely hope they never, ever 'update'.  It's even maintained its retro lettering for each show - I happened to stroll past when the sign guy was hanging the letters up for the next act:

Photo by Andrew Collins at this link

One area that could really do with a bit of revamping, is their downstairs bar area. It seems like a dead end, so people tend to congregate upstairs. My 72 year old mother enunciated the problem: "Teal, ugh, they need to repaint it and maybe put some mirrors on the back wall." I thought of initiating a Joyce community initiative to help refurb it - in fact, a stroll around the streets of Manhattan often reveals enough discarded designer object d'art to redo the dingiest dive ...

From my Galfromdownunder Uncut blog, May, 2009: 

Last night we scored $19 frontish-row tickets to the most amazing, trippy, surreal, illusionist dance performance I've seen since Philippe Genty - MOMIX's 'Botanica' at the Joyce Theater. OK, I saw PG a looooong time ago. Perhaps this stuff is now par for the course...

"It's like Circ du Soleil before the latter went all commercial," said mum. Google MOMIX and you'll see it's commandeered by a truly Dali-esque character-choreographer, Moses Pendleton.

It opens with a stunning multimedia closeup of a rose that recedes slowly into deep space. Then this ghostly 30' (40?) tall plant costume wafts on stage, opening and closing like a giant jellyfish on a stalk. Three maidens in white virginal dresses rise from the billowing sheeted floor to frolic with its fuzzy tentacles.

Then there's an eye-popping blackout scene where only the bobbing and twisting lace-covered arms and shins of dances are illuminated in glowing green light, resembling caffeinated glowworms going troppo in a dark cave.

A gal did this amazing spinning thing with a hoop of floor-length beaded strands on her head. Mum dryly remarked "now if we tried that spinning beaded lampshade trick we'd end up with it wrapped around our necks."

Her favorite was the gal who did a conceptually simple but stunning piece where she writhed in a skincolored bodysuit on a tinted, tilted mirror surface - a 'hall of mirrors' idea pushed to the max.

A jaw dropper was this enormous, rubbery and anatomically-correct Triceratops skeleton ridden slo-mo-rodeo style by a semi-naked goddess, while in the background a bunch of rock-like creatures engulfed and cavorted with naked bodies. The museum of Natural History oughta get this act into their lobby to jazz up their dinosaur bones exhibit ... in short, A MUST SEE. Our cheapseats were quite acceptable, as some of the scenes best viewed from further back appeared on video simulcast on a giant screen at the back ...

Momix are coming back mid 2010. I'm so there!

Joyce Theater

www.joyce.org

175 8th Avenue
New York, NY 10011-1694
(212) 242-0800

$3.50: MUJI's minimalist metrosexual toothbrush

TWO MONTHS after returning from my whirlwind bike+bullet train visit to Japan, I'm still turning Japanese. I'm cooking up a nabe storm in my Kyoto nabemono, I'm drinking sencha+matcha at all the wrong moments (like before going to bed) and I'm leafing luxuriantly through the copy of The Aesthetics of the Japanese Lunchbox by Kenji Ekuan "one of Japan's foremost industrial designers".

Ekuan-san romances the minimalist, orderly tension of the bento box with such a lyrical reverence I wouldn't be surprised if he had something to do with the design of this toothbrush.

This is just toothbrush. Thank god.  It's not an mp3 player to groove along to while you floss. It's not a vibrating wand with meat-seeking infra-red technology to hunt and destroy trapped flesh of dead animal from your fajita binge. It's not an exercise in Pantone mayhem and ergonomic design overkill that typifies the average Oral-Turbo-ABC.

It's actually even less than your average, ugly, overwrought toothbrush. It's a barely-there, colorless handle, smooth and minimally sculpted, with no weird kinks and bends, ending in a brush that can actually duck behind the molars in the balcony seats. In fact, the bristles themselves are "rounded" to further reach those spots where floss fears to thread, although Muji also sells a slightly cheaper, "flat bristle" version - why, I have no idea.

The complete absence of color is restful. Perhaps it really is designed for die-hard metrosexual bachelors, who have no need for a pink or other colored version sitting in the rack to know which is theirs.

Radical idea: Imagine using merely the dictionary definition as a design brief?

toothbrush |ˈtoōθˌbrə | noun
a small brush with a long handle used for cleaning the teeth.


Before spotting this piece of marvellously modest Muji minimalism, both Stateside and Tokyo-side, I went to the usual place - a drugstore - to buy a toothbrush.  I was bailed up for several minutes trying to reconcile the bewildering array of contorted, technicolor offerings. Like these:



I mean, holy cavity, what is that? I feel like it came from the 8-and-under section of Toys'R'Us, like the bristles are going to give me blue or purple teeth, and how much extra am I paying for some fancy die-cutting machine to sculpt all those graphical swooshes and dots? Have you not heard of "blue and green should not be seen, without a color in between?"

Now don't get me wrong - I am as much a lover of color and and bling and out'n'out maximalism when done right. But the Sagrada Familia these ain't.

In my FastCompany blog I wrote about Feldenkreis and the perils of escalation - otherwise known as "overkill". The product of overkill is ugliness. An overloaded piece of "pizza sushi", as my Japanese friend calls it - groaning under the weight of avocado, fish roe, mayonnaise, mango, tempura - is flavor ugliness. A boss that says "and if you do it again," after you've said "It will never happen again, boss", is personality ugliness. An overproduced studio track is ... Barry Manilow (no personal offence to Bazza, he's a good guy). OK, make that Celine Dion.

No doubt the manufacturer of the above blingy brushes will insist that focus groups like them. Well, when you force people in a fluorescent-lit, carpeted-partition room on a Tuesday night to focus on a bunch of objects on a white table, they'll eventually end up growing on you like a wart. How many of you have flicked though the unfathomable dross in an airplane duty-free catalog;then, for god's sake, ended up actually buying some bling at 30,000 feet in a frenzy of boredom?

Visual and aural escalation creates an environment of cacophany, causing dizziness, confusion, irritation and stress, ultimately leading to the consumption of happy pills, alcohol, therapy and television shopping. Include in this, road rage, stripmalls edged with awful neon lighting, Build-A-Bear - you get the idea.

Overwrought technicolor toothbrushes like this must be stopped.

Thank Buddha I can gaze through the barely-there, unobtrusive handle of my Muji toothbrush, and feel a sense of calm and clarity wash over me like ripples over pond of fat koi. Throw away your meds, buy a Muji toothbrush and notice a visible difference to your life in just three gargles.

Now about escalated dental floss - that's another 20 minutes in the aisle ... don't get me started.

toothbrush |ˈtoōθˌbrə | noun
a small brush with a long handle used for cleaning the teeth.