Body Sushi & Body Parties; Ancestry.com & NYPL

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

BODY SUSHI & BODY PARTIES

   From today's NEW YORK POST, 20 August 2003, pg. 43:


 http://www.nypost.com/food/3611.htm
                NAKED LUNCH
There's a girl in my sushi

 By BRIDGET HARRISON

(PHOTO CAPTION, and boy-oh-boy, what a photo!--ed.)                                                                                                                                        Global Cuisine catering, based in West Hollywood, serves well-heeled clients sushi displayed on the body of a naked woman.
- Global Cuisine

                August 20, 2003 --THERE'S nothing genteel about this finger food.

   Corporate bigwigs are forking over as much as $700 a head for dinner parties where guests are served sushi off a naked woman.

   The secret gourmet trend has taken off in the past six months in L.A., and now New York is getting on the act.

   "I'm being inundated with requests," said Gary Arabia, who runs a high-end catering company called Global Cuisine, based in the Warner Bros. studio in West Hollywood, and created body sushi for his clients two years ago.

   "I'm getting calls from people all over the country, but the big interest is in New York," Arabia told The Post.

   Arabia, who catered New York's Grammy Awards after-party, threw an exclusive body sushi soiree for 14 guests in an Upper East Side apartment for a corporate client last spring. Now he's working on a similar dinner for a private Manhattan businessman in October.

   Body sushi, he stresses, isn't the stuff of frat parties or stag nights.

   "You don't mess around with this. It's got to be done right," said Arabia, who personally works next to the naked woman, replenishing the sushi supply with a team of six chefs.

   "It needs to be done with the handling and care of professionals."

   Arabia uses trained body models who know how to lie still for up to three hours.

   For his New York events, he flies in L.A. actress Lilani, 26, who has two years of experience as a food model.

   "It takes a lot of concentration and muscle control," he said.

   New York catering company Raw Catering also throws body parties, and co-owner Andrew Hagene says he was inundated with requests from around the world after serving pastries off a woman for the opening of the Museum of Sex at Lotus last year.
(...)


   Secret gourmet trend?
   I like food, and I like sex, but...IMHO, women and chocolate just don't go well together.
   Food model?  Chiquita banana is now a career choice?
   The NY POST story is a direct steal from the LOS ANGELES TIMES (only these 3 ProQuest articles so far):


1.
      LETTERS; Body Sushi
              Los Angeles Times.       Los Angeles, Calif.: Aug 16, 2003.                   p. E.4

2.
      Hungry for 'body sushi'?
       Tribune Newspapers.       Chicago Tribune.       Chicago, Ill.: Aug 15, 2003.                   p. 38

3.
      L.A. CENTRIC MARY McNAMARA; The naked plate piled high: This is body sushi
       MARY McNAMARA.       Los Angeles Times.       Los Angeles, Calif.: Aug 12, 2003.                   p. E.1

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OT: NYPL STILL AWFUL--On Thursday morning, I requested the CARIBBEAN SENTINEL newspaper.  It was offsite,  I needed the approval of an NYPL librarian to sign my slip.
   This afternoon, I walked into the New York Public Library again--a place I like to avoid now.  There were the usual tour groups.  The tour leader talked about the marble.  This is a place that doesn't subscribe to ProQuest for basic research tools.
   I asked for my offsite request.  It wasn't there.  When did I send it?  Did I bring the little yellow slip?  Uh, no.  And I had forgotten the title of my request.  So I got on the computer and got the title and the call number again.  I got back to the window and there were different librarians on the shift.  After about half an hour (actually, six days), I finally got my materials--which weren't even helpful.
   The NYPL is years behind on every single digitization project (menus, Black history, etc.).  Someone should do an expose on how awful it is--now a ruin, just for tourists to look at the marble.

ANCESTRY.COM--Ancestry.com has added more Ohio newspapers!  Not Cincinnati.  Not Cleveland.  Almost no Columbus.  We have Elyria, Ohio!  Coshocton, Ohio!  When did crappy Ohio newspapers become such a selling point?  Feast on these recent offerings:

PROGRESSIVE ACT (Coshocton, Ohio)  1857-60
COSHOCTON MORNING TRIBUNE (Coshocton, Ohio) 1911, 1915-17
ELYRIA DAILY TELEPHONE (Elyria, Ohio)  1886-87
ELYRIA INDEPENDENT DEMOCRAT (Elyria, Ohio)  1876-77
HURON REFLECTOR (Norwalk, Ohio)  1832-34, 1842-44, 1849-51
NEWARK ADVOCATE (Newark, Ohio)  1934
NORWALK REPORTER (Norwalk, Ohio)  1827-30
DECATUR LOCAL REVIEW (Decatur, Illinois)  1873-76
EVENING COURIER (Decatur, Illinois)  1935-38, 1941-44
EVENING BULLETIN (Decatur, Illinois)  years?
COLUMBUS DISPATCH (Columbus, Ohio)  1895
COSHOCTON DAILY TRIBUNE (Coshocton, Ohio)  1909-10, 1916
COSHOCTON WEEKLY TIMES (Coshocton, Ohio)  1907-09
DEMOCRATIC STANDARD (Coshocton, Ohio)  1891-97

   There it is--the additions that I've been waiting weeks for.  Honestly, can you pick out crappier newspapers if you TRY?
   The states are doing this stuff when they have the money, as seen by Utah and Missouri and Georgia.  Ancestry.com newspapers is the Radio Shack TRS-80 of our age.
   I'd like to look up "Johnny Marzetti" in the COLUMBUS DISPATCH, and I have 1895.  Hey Ancestry--got any more newspapers from Coshocton and Elyria coming up next week?