Bruce the Blog

[TO SEE NCNLOCAL-TV VIDEOS OF ALL SIX PERFORMANCES BY FINALISTS VANESSA RACCIOPPO AND MARYANN RENZA, GO TO http://www.facebook.com/NCNLocal]

There were no losers Tuesday night (23) at Augie’s Prime Cut Restaurant and Bar in the Mohegan Lake hamlet of Yorktown. (One of the myriad beauties of life in Yorktown is the charm of having five sub-’burbs grouped under the rubric of hamlet. Billy Bard would be proud, if a tad confused because, after all, as far as he was concerned, to paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein II, “There is nothing like a Dane.”)

After such a self-indulgently elongated parenthetical aside, the writer in me (yeah, he’s in there somewhere, I swear) is compelled to act like one of those ’60s serial weekly TV dramas that began with a recap of “last week’s episode.”

Well, it’s true. There were no losers at the final, championship-round, no-holds-barred, cage match of Augie’s Idol Season 1 (Season 2 starts April 22). Not the audience (with an unfortunate momentary lapse of couth at the end), not the restaurant staff or management, and certainly not the two performers, who gave it their all and treated the jam-packed house to a thrilling display of competitive vocalizations in a community contest that was a rousing success on several levels.

The community itself — and people came from all over Westchester as well as beyond its borders, including as far away as Poughkeepsie (made famous by Gene Hackman’s cryptic recurring line in Oscar-winning “The French Connection” to a punk: “Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?”) — got to spend a weekend-style night midweek each Tuesday for 14 weeks. The ultimate night was simply amazing not least because on a horrendously inclement evening, when it took me nearly an hour to drive back to Yorktown from Hastings on a snow-encrusted Taconic, Augie’s was more crowded than arguably for any of the previous elimination rounds. It was quite a sight.

Showman Sal Barone, owner of the hot spot with wife Audrey Hochroth, even added his trademark dash of class and flash with what he jokingly called his “flashlight,” actually a skylight the likes of which are used at Hollywood premieres. As I was driving up a white-blanketed Lexington Avenue from Route 202, the beam of light washed across the night sky like a beacon beckoning to a judge who was running late after hightailing it from a really cool reception at Harvest on the Hudson to launch Hudson Valley Restaurant Week March 15-28.  Fortunately, the competition start time was running late too, so my lateness was right on schedule!

The restaurant staff and management benefited from a major boost in the watering hole’s reputation, reach, number of regulars and, quite evidently from all the filled tables and heavily peopled bar, midweek take.

Even the judges, including yours truly, had so much fun it should be illegal, with time off for good behavior.

Extra big shout-outs go to keyboardist par excellence Shelly Gartner and sound technician Brian Gunther, both of whose reliability, proficiency and professionalism helped elevate this competition way beyond a run-of-the-mill karaoke night.

The final night was graced by Maxine (Mrs. Tommy) Agee, a delightful person who served as a celebrity judge and with vocal chops of her own, as she amply showed with her rendition of “Wind Beneath My Wings.”

But the real point of this musing about the musicfest Augie’s treated us to these past several months is that both MaryAnn Renza and Vanessa Raccioppo are winners. Their final three performances each were a fitting, exciting culmination to the hard-fought competition.

Even my friends in the crowd who were so upset at the end they made some inelegant remarks about the outcome can be forgiven their trespasses because that’s how seriously some people took this bout among the warbling warriors. Some silly remark was passed — shouted, actually — that one of the contestants “should have been gone three weeks ago,” which couldn’t be further from the truth. Nobody in their right mind who was a regular Idol-ator would argue that MaryAnn and Vanessa weren’t the most deserving finalists.  We of course are not about to dignify the dishy outburst by identifying to whom it was aimed because it has zero validity. Like we said, there were no losers. That’s the point. That’s the spirit of this competition. To suggest otherwise is to totally miss the point, and perhaps to overindulge in liquid refreshment beyond your tolerance. That’s why The Kinks’ Ray Davies (pronounced “Davis,” BTW) called it “Old Demon Alcohol.” It can make people act waywardly and talk gibberish.

Miss MaryAnn opened it with “Remember Me,” and Miss Vanessa answered the well-sung challenge with “At Last.” Next time up, Miss MaryAnn lit into her belting mode with “The Greatest Love of All” and Miss Vanessa delivered a fresh rendition of “Over the Rainbow” that highlighted her smooth style.

Then it was time for the final round and Miss MaryAnn certainly didn’t disappoint, using her brassy, room-size personality and punctuated gesticulation to full effect with an homage to Tina Turner’s “Proud Mary.”

Finally, Miss Vanessa capped the competition with a sultry, shimmering “Power of Love.”

Both of these Misses didn’t miss much when it came to having the right instincts and excellent song selection that showed off their respective strengths and muted their lesser qualities. They both know how to put a song over, a talent that at its best is transparent because it’s effortless, but, perhaps paradoxically, you still know it when you see it, and hear it. Vanessa received a $2000 check from Sal Barone and Audrey Hochroth as well as a chance to appear in the April production of “Cats” staged by Scarlett Antonia of Antonia Arts at the Paramount Theater in Peekskill. Miss MaryAnn Renza received a $500 check from Bel D’Oro Jewelers owners Gino and Josephine Rubino, who are upping the runner-up prize for Season 2 to $750. They also are exploring the possible appearance of the elegant Miss Vanessa Raccioppo in Bel D’Oro marketing.

Speaking of Misses, I’m going to miss watching all the Augie’s Idol entrants, especially these two. But who knows. There’s always Season 2, right Sal and Audrey. Maybe I’ll even get my long-awaited break as a standup. That’s the dream of every aspiring comic — to play the big room in a Vegas hotel. In my case, it may be Sal announcing, “And now, laddies and germs, playing in Augie’s Men’s Room, please welcome Bruce the Blog. Fortunately, seating is limited.” Sorta gives new meaning to the show biz term “standup.” But I’m not greedy. All I need is a single laugh in that venue to feel flush with success. Oops. Time to clean up my act. Besides, the hook’s here. Later.

[For the prequel to this blog entry, see Oh, MOMA! Part I posted Feb. 21, 2010]

When we checked Museum of Modern Art’s website Friday in anticipation of visiting the venue the following day, we were crestfallen to find the popular Tim Burton exhibit sold out.

[Note from Grammar Geek: there is no hyphen for “sold out” in that usage, though the indiscriminate use of hyphens has become a distressingly common, and subliterate, faux pas nowadays. The hyphen would be appropriate in context of noun or adjective usage like “It’s a sold-out show,” but not when saying, “The show was sold out.” Thanks, GG. Now, take-a walk.]

Due to the popularity of the Burton exhibit, MOMA requires patrons to reserve a time to enter the gallery with a time-stamped ticket (at no extra charge). So when the website tells an onliner that each posted on-the-hour o’clock is “sold out,” it simply means issuing any more tickets at the appointed hour would be a fire hazard or just a bane of safe crowd control and comfort levels.

Once at the museum on Saturday, my much better half (though it’s not too hard being that when the other half is moi) Elyse, as is her paternally inherited wont to consider ”No” simply as a precursor to “Of course you can,” found out that circa 5:00 p.m. we most likely could just walk in to the exhibit, after the mid-afternoon crush thinned out. As advertised by a museum staffer, to Elyse, we were in like flint at 5 on the nose.

While the exhibit does not present any element — eg, a short film — that starts at a particular time, the reservation times posted online are every hour on the hour probably because it takes a good hour to take in everything Burton MOMA has to offer. It’s a prodigious display of a particularly off-center popular culture artistic sensibility that has given the world Edward Scissorhands, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman (1), Corpse Bride, Mars Attacks! and Ed Wood, among others.

There are props, artifacts and costumes from all the above in the exhibit, as well as production notes hand scrawled on legal yellow pad paper, such as suggesting an unscripted line of dialogue (about the undesirability of cannibalism in polite society) to the young actor playing Roald Dahl’s Charlie in the film remake formerly titled in its original incarnation Willy Wonka. To say that Burton’s version of the story is darker is to encapsulate the whole of his ouevre.  [Wow, I’m really in a French italicized idiom today; must be the Canadian Winter Olympics, no? Oui.]

There are also mementoes from Burton’s artistic blossoming as an adolescent growing up in Southern California, such as high school essays and locally award-winning posters for civic activities.

Upon entering the exhibit, there’s a video monitor montage (with screens arrayed along a makeshift breezeway) of his animated character Stainboy. Certain of his semi-mutant illustrated figures bespeak the glaring influence of Charles Addams, and perhaps of early Playboy Magazine cartoonist Gahan Wilson, a master of macabre social satire writ in ink.

My daughter Elissa and I spent a full 30 minutes in the Burton funhouse and didn’t see everything, because the museum’s closing time of 5:30 closed in on us.

On the way out, we passed through a photography gallery, causing me to rue not experiencing that part of this magnificent repository’s diverse works. Next time.

The Wife and The Daughter, who have been known to answer to the given names Elyse and Elissa, respectively, wanted to take in a museum this past Saturday. The Daughter is home for an asynchronous mid-February break from SUNY Oneonta, where elementary ed is her game and math her “concentration,” as they say in academia. It’s asynchronous because none of her buds (or for girls is it buddas?) are on break simultaneously. Dem’s the breaks (and if you’re a Dem dese days, dings definitely are broken, aren’t dey?).

So she is given to doing crazy stuff like auditing an elementary school class at Brookside on Monday and Tuesday, and attending Yorktown’s Board of Ed meeting Monday night to take notes on assignment. And on Saturday, we decided to go get us some culture at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, the place I have loved since I was knee-high to an illegally-opened fire hydrant. There’s no place in the world like Manhattan, not that I’ve been to all that many spots on the globe, so call it just a wild guess. But one with which I find myself eminently comfortable and confident. If you know a more exciting place on the planet than the isle once called Manhatta, please text me the longitude and latitude at your earliest convenience so I can visit it forthwith.

Admittedly, I wasn’t jumping up and down about visiting the cultural mecca indecorously abbreviated as MOMA, which sounds like the name of the mother of a famous cellist. What’s so funny? Makes sense to me that Yo-Yo Ma’s momma would be named Mo-Ma. If you dare to disagree, please stop reading this blog right now and I’ll give you a full refund.

Okay, for those of you still here … I found myself stopping and staring at virtually every objet d’art as we wended our way through the museum, especially absorbed by the exhibit on architecture and landscape, though I wonder what it meant that there was no Frank Gehry on display.

The Monet Water Lilies room was ethereal. I wanted to spend more time in the Joan Jonas video installation in the Akio Morita room (informing The Wife that he is a co-founder of Sony).

The Gabriel Orozco exhibit was too much for The Wife, though I can’t imagine why she didn’t find the first work thoroughly compelling: an empty cardboard box on the floor as you enter the gallery. That was only outdone by the yougurt container tops affixed to the wall in the first room. I could have spent all day studying those for their beautifully rendered expiration dates, but nooooooo, the ladies in my life had to move on to more important things, like the Tim Burton exhibit, which was AWESOME!

To be continued …. bed beckons.

Augie’s Prime Cut Restaurant & Bar in Mohegan Lake Tuesday night turned into Motown, at least for the first round of the quarterfinals in the rockin’ and rollin’ Augie’s Idol competition that packs this already popular dining destination every week.

I had the privilege of being a guest judge this past Tuesday, thanks to owners Audrey Hochroth and Sal Barone, who have proven promotional wizards. Frankly, the task was made more fun by the fact what I said — as well as the other three judges — had no bearing on the outcome. That’s because this was the first week that the live audience voted for their favorites, showing the door to the singer with the fewest votes.

It was down to four vocalists: Brianne Chasanoff, Vanessa Raccioppo, Rob Raio, Maryann Renza.

The other judges were musicians Joe and Carmine, who I quickly hit it off with, and Augie’s Chef Fabio, who doesn’t pull his punches when delivering a verdict to each singer. He told Rob Raio, who admittedly had a bit of a rough night with both Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely and Billy Joel’s New York State of Mind, “I didn’t think you’d still be here.”

Brianne is notable for playing keyboards and composing her own music. She has a Carol King-ish presence and is undeniably a musical talent.

I asked Maryann if she knows who Ethel Merman is because Maryann is a belter in the old tradition of La Merman, famous for her star turns in Annie Get Your Gun and Gypsy. Fittingly, Maryann sang Aretha’s Respect. I told her, “It takes gut to do Aretha, and you also have the chops.” She knows how to fill a room with her voice and personality.

Vanessa has the best pure voice in the competiton, and few of the regulars these past few weeks are surprised she’s still there. We expected her to be. In fact, at this point, you have to consider her the odds-on favorite to be crowned Augie’s Idol on Feb. 23. Her Motown choice was the gorgeous Jackson 5 melody, I’ll Be There. “You had me at I’ll,” I told Vanessa after she finished.

She’s a sensual stylist who pours herself into the song and knows how to phrase, which requires an artful combination of training, technique and pure instinct.

Among popular singers, the two greatest exponents of song phrasing in my — and a lot of other people’s — book are Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. The average listener wouldn’t notice much, and that’s precisely the point: effortlessness is the essence of their brilliance in making virtually each song they sing their own.  As someone who plays Sinatra and Garland recordings frequently, it’s virtually impossible for me to listen to any other singer perform their signature songs — which are abundant — without comparing the cover, unfavorably, to the genuine article.

Two of the greatest albums I own are live concerts of Sinatra at the Sands in Las Vegas and — the all-time king (or queen) of live concerts: Judy at Carnegie Hall, recorded in 1962. You’ve never heard a tres chic  audience of A-list celebrities and socialites go crazy like they do in this concert. During the multiple encores, the ovations for Garland that cascade down from the tiers of the historic hall last longer than the songs.

When I told Vanessa she reminded me of a torch singer, like Peggy Lee, a young woman at a ringside table told me to explain what that meant. I did a lousy job of it by saying, “It’s a singer who simmers, and Vanessa, you light my fire.” Ha ha. Bruce the wiseacre. What I should have said is that it’s a performer who smolders in the delivery of slow songs that light the flame of love, hence torch singer.  Vanessa fills the bill.

By the way, Brianne didn’t make the cut Tuesday, so next Tuesday, it’s Maryann, Rob, Vanessa going toe to toe and mouth to mouth. Oops. That doesn’t sound right. Come next Tuesday, we’ll find out which one of them doesn’t sound right to the audience. I have my own thoughts on who that will be, but I’ll keep those thoughts to myself for now.

Please go to The English Languish page for today’s blog entry. Thank you for turning the page on Bruce the Blog.

Wall Street. Sixth Avenue. Easy Street. Main Street. Which one doesn’t fit?

Hmmm. Let’s see.

Wall Street is where investment banking treasury mints like Goldman Sachs of Moolah deem it a hardship when, as it just announced, its impoverished workers will just have to make do with only half-million-dollar annual bonuses. Oops. There goes the country club membership, Cougar Plum, at least the backup country club membership when we’re in West Palm. How will we break it to the kiddies when they’re back from their study abroad program at the Etoile d’ Bratwurst in Fleur de Lis?

Sixth Avenue is where wiseacre mediocre media monkeys dispense tens of millions of dollars to middling TV personalities who actually refuse job offers and whose appeal to begin and end with is 90% time and place and booking agent and production values, and 10% personality.  

As a talk show host, Leno is a world-class stand-up comic. As a talk show host, O’Brien is a world-class comedy writer. They both embody The Peter Principle of performing talent, which is to keep rising past your skill set’s glass ceiling until cracks appear in your smooth facade, much as when a TV actor releases an album to cash in on his or her celebrity in the hopes the gullible audience won’t notice they don’t have much of a voice.

But don’t mind me, because I don’t fully get Will Ferrell either. He’s parlayed extremely broad humor and a recyclable shtick of familiar frat-house shenanigans into a blockbuster film career. Only in Hollywood.

Have you ever seen Craig Ferguson on CBS at 11:30. Have you ever been able to stomach him for more than 30 seconds? If you have, I’d like your recipe for Pepto Bismol, because it must work wonders. This guy mugs so shamelessly, broadly and relentlessly, if he were a blogger, he would be me, but probably would have enough sense not to admit it. If success on these amnesia-lovers’ plugathons were dependent on more than a 10% personality quotient, Ferguson would have been canceled before his opening show’s opening monologue.

Craig the Fungus, Conan the Barber and Jay-Won’t-Lay-Low are the avatars of 1960s broadcasting executive Paul Klein’s watershed theory of audience indiscretion that posited couch potatoes slouch towards their LOP as much as their lap: that is, we channel surf like boob-tube zombies until we alight on the Least Objectionable Program. Although I always found him to be more a MOP.

Easy Street is where all the above dwell.

Main Street is where they pave their way to stardom and riches and neuroses when the first falters and the second stagnates because the first falters and the latter sends them into a downward spiral of unproductive maturation.

Main Street is where some of us don’t get the fascination with the people who live on Easy Street. That includes me, by the way. I don’t get my own, albeit dwindling, fascination, with people in “The Show Business.”

Modernity has brainwashed us into seeing that locution as awkward, yet it’s wholly in keeping with how we still converse about every other business, isn’t it?

We don’t go around talking about “auto industry” but about “the auto industry.” We refer to “the banking business,” not “banking business.” Although we do say “consumer electonics” rather than “the consumer electronics.”

In yesteryear, the show business was no business archetypically ambitious immigrants wanted their children to mess with, a la seminal talking motion picture The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, which was autobiographical.

Today, people will sell their souls to be rich and famous the Hollywood Way. Or, as in Conan O’Brien’s case, the show business bossman will sell his soul to give his employee a windfall so there are no hard feelings after the employee has upped and told the bossman to go shove his offer of a high-profile TV show five nights a week.

It’s times like this I thank my lucky stars that someone like Conan O’Brien likes little old me so much he wants to entertain me a half-hour earlier, and was even willing to lower himself by accepting tens of millions of dollars to free himself up to practice his craft somewhere that would pay him even more than that to have his way.

What did we do to deserve this? I shudder to think.

Sure, Peyton Manning’s a legend in his own time. Shades of Joe Montana and John Elway the way he can close out games, gets cooler the hotter the pressure. Dares you to stop him. Picks apart defenses with the ease and clarity of a speed-reading Rhodes Scholar deciphering Dr. Seuss.

But Peyton’s already won a Stupor Bowl (most of them are; the rare-in-a-while exception lives up to the Supermania).  So has his little bro Eli. Two Super Bowl rings is more than enough for any one family, let alone a set of siblings who didn’t even bother sharing them across the generation gap. Today’s kids are so darned spoiled, especially when they’re sinfully talented quarterbacks dancing behind a bevy of behemoths who feast on raw meat smothered in helmets and padding.

Let’s cut to the chase. How can you on Feb. 7, 2010, NOT root for N’awlins, for saint’s sake? It’s not just the double-entendred “romance” of balconied, bumptious, rococo Bourbon Street, with its “thou swill” allure, or those powdered, fat-friendly beignets, or those hurricanes (a really bad double-entendre), or the French Quarter, or all that jazz.

We’ve just been terribly reminded anew of the real meaning of the oft-corrupted word “enormity,” which means not merely huge but unspeakably huge horror, as in Holocaust or Sept. 11 or tsunami or Katrina hurricane or Haitian earthquake.

Those of us living in relative paradise, geologically speaking, can’t begin to fathom life under water, under rubble, under ground, under unlivable circumstances. Back a couple years, I sat comfortably on a bus as it “toured” the notoriously disfigured Lower Ninth Ward, where front stoops stooped to nowhere because the house foundation formerly attached had been swept down the block and knocked on its side. It wasn’t like a war zone; it was a war zone.

Yes, the New Orleans Saints, NFC Champions for the first time in their history, are sentimental favorites to win the Super Bowl. Even the team’s stadium name is prophetic: Superdome.

On Sunday, after watching on Friday the star-studded Hope for Haiti Now telecast organized by the reinarnation of Cary Grant named George Clooney, I spent the best eight bucks imaginable by downloading the telethon’s commemorative album of today’s top recording artists who performed on the special. It’s good music for a great cause: humanity.

This may look like an encore of yesterday’s (Jan. 11) blog, which is totally appropriate since we’re talking about vocalists performing in front of fans.

The vocalists are contestants in a local tribute to Fox Network’s American Idol phenomenon and the fans are patrons of Augie’s Prime Cut Steakhouse in Mohegan Lake, whose proprietors Audrey (”Augie”) Hochroth and Sal Barone are promotional masterminds, judging by the public’s response to this ongoing event.

It was not only a lot of fun on Tuesday night but a lot different than what you’ll experience at almost any other local dining establishement. It’s a very savvy businessperson who can figure out how to not only differentiate his or her offering but also execute it in a way that resonates resoundingly with the target audience. This dynamic husband-and-wife team know just how to pull it off and it’s obvious they are having a ball doing it.

For all the contestants making a pitch to be the winner who walks away with $2000 and a role in the April 2010 Antonia Arts production of Cats at the Paramount Center in Peekskill, the evening moves along quicker than I expected.

At the show was Scarlett Antonia, the eponymous founder of Antonia Arts, who regaled me with stories about her encounters with names like Liza Minnelli when she was in the Broadway dance scene. We share a passion for Sondheim and musical theater in general. With her was marketing whiz Robin Newhook, whose idea it was to bring Antonia and Audrey together and have Augie’s Idol winner cast in a role in Cats.

I also enjoyed jawing with More Sugar Publisher Tom O’Neill and with my friend Bernie Stringer, with whom I share both a love of live local music and a vision and determination to help establish and market a North County Sound. North County News’s recent “Sounds of Peekskill” co-operative ad effort seen on page 2 of our Dec. 23 issue – sponsored by Bean Runner Cafe, Division Street Grill, Ruben’s Mexican Cafe, and 12 Grapes — was inspired by Bernie’s original concept that he brought to us.

The judges on Jan. 12 included Audrey Hochroth (she must know somebody!), Augie’s Chef Fabio (he must know somebody too!), “River” from Michael Roberts Salon and Amanda Brown, whose been a backup singer for Alicia Keys.

I wasn’t the only one surprised by some judges’ remarks following a thoroughly captivating and polished rendition of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” by a very poised, professional young woman. She clearly was one of the two or three best performers of the night. When you start hearing, “It was too pitchy,” it’s a cue that a judge is parroting what’s been said by the music professionals who judge the real American Idol. When I’m a judge for the Feb. 9 “Augie’s Idol,” I will do two things: 1) Not call any contestant “pitchy”; and 2) Ask another judge who uses the word to define what it means. 

A Yankee starter who can’t find the strike zone in late innings: to me, that’s “too pitchy.”

The crowd clearly also was surprised — and not in full agreement — with whom was sent packing at the end. But that’s what make any “Idol” event — whether the genuine article on Fox or local takeoffs — so suspenseful and popular.

Sal Barone told me Augie’s also is planning for this spring a joint promotion with Honda Curry that will award a car to the lucky winner.

In the meantime, check out our Facebook.com/NCNLocal page for our exclusive NCN-TV clips of an amazing performance of “Hero” by Amanda Brown and an interview with Sal and with contestant Hans, who admits he survived the cut “by the skin of his teeth” because the keyboardist and he were in different keys on “Mack the Knife.”

Chase Media Group’s corporate guru Frank J. Rich and I chatted awhile with Sal Barone of Augie’s Primecut Restaurant & Bar in Mohegan Lake Monday night, just after Sal and his restaurateur wife Audrey, whose nickname is Augie, raffled off a couple of Super Bowl tickets. Who knows? Maybe the lucky winners will get to see the Jets, but we somehow doubt it. As noted to one of our sales managers this morning, “Sooner or later, some team is going to cool your Jets.”

Sal could give seminars to other Main Street businesses, restaurants especially, in advertising and promotion. He really gets it, such as noting that, “When you’re busy, you need to advertise, and when things are slow, you need to advertise more.” That’s not the first time we’ve heard that, but we don’t hear local business people say — or practice — that logic of commerce enough.

The big news these days at Augie’s, other than its celebrating a year of brisk, busy business after having opened smack in the middle of a historic recession, is the Augie’s Idol contest, modeled after guess what? Simon Cowell may be leaving American Idol, we’re told by the gossipmeisters, but nobody leaves Augie’s when its crowd-pleasing version of Idol is going full tilt.

There are 11 contestants left and the next sing-off is Tuesday, Jan. 12, at 8:30 p.m. There are about two months of judging left, each Tuesday at the same time, culminating in early March with the last vocalist standing.

The celebrity judge this Tuesday is Alicia Keys backup singer Amanda Brown, whose killer voice can be seen and heard on YouTube. Audrey told us Amanda showed up a week early last Tuesday, and serenaded the patrons with a knockout impromptu performance that had the diners’ jaws dropping at the sound of her huge talent.

For the final four weeks of the competition, the voting will be done — a la American Idol — by the public, but only those who show up at the restaurant — on Lexington Avenue just south of Route 6 in Mohegan Lake — will get the chance to cast a ballot for their fave balladeer among the cast of chanticleers.

In addition to walking home with 2000 bucks cash, the Augie’s Idol winner will be cast in a lead role in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage musical “Cats” slated this April at the Paramount Center in Peekskill as a production of Antonia Arts.

I’ll be at Augie’s Tuesday night. Hope to see you there!

It was rockin’ last night at Jeanne and Rich Credidio’s 12 Grapes Restaurant, Music and Wine Bar on Division Street in Peekskill. Did I mention Wine Bar? Will Van Sise and band were in a guitar-driving groove that had more than just me tapping their feet, clapping their hands and bopping in place.

Since I was flying solo while the missus was out of town on business, it was a lot of fun hooking up unexpectedly there with Yorktowners Katharine and Liam Carroll, fellow lovers of good live music and, from what I found out, among the most faithful patrons of 12 Grapes, dining there at least once a week. We couldn’t keep still listening to the great covers of The Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Procol Harum and other super groups of our bygone era. Make no mistake. Our generation’s harking back to those sounds that always will resonate in our body and soul now and forever more is no different than our parents swooning in the 1960s and ’70s to Crosby’s croon or to the Glenn Miller and Dorseys Big Band sounds of the ’40s.

Part of what makes 12 Grapes virtually unique in this region is the unwavering passion and particularity that perfectionist Rich Credidio brings to seeking and booking acts. He not only has a very keen eye and ear and chops for reeling in established musicians — thus making his venue in the Hudson Valley a destination house even for Manhattan-centric performers — but also prides himself on nurturing young, undiscovered talent from all over the country.

And no ones enjoys the music, the food, the diners — providing warm, personal service and creating an intimate, fun ambience — more than Jeanne Credidio, a former “Mad Woman,” as in Madison Avenue advertising executive, in her previous life.

Between Jeanne and Rich, they run a social club of sorts that is sophisticated in its professional operation, behind the scenes, but is casual and anything but snooty in its customer experience and contact. Rich told me last night they just renovated the kitchen and, musically, he’s “taking it to another level” in the caliber of talent he and Jeannie present.

All I know is that this creative, commercially savvy couple don’t seem capable of hitting a sour note ever, as demonstrated by their continuing success and growth and spreading reputation. (Oh, and Jeannie, you’re right. That Cambria chardonnay is primo.)

See you guys real soon. Thanks for having a great party place where a “bachelor for the night” like me can hang out and chill out. More important, Elyse got home from her Vegas business trip safe and sound. Fortunately for me, during her two-day stay there, Tiger apparently wasn’t in town. I’ve heard about how well he scores even when not on the golf course.