One Year in New York City

Five to try

2008-07-16T23:40:00.002-04:00

New York is a pizza town, but it's also a burger town, which is great because I'm a burger guy; click here and here for more on my burger adventures. I'm also a list guy, so it was fun reading this list of Alan Richman's Five Favorite Burgers in New York City. They are, in no particular order, burgers from Shake Shack, Big Nick's, Blue Smoke, Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridien, and Peter Luger. I've had the Shack burger, which was almost as good as a burger from a true paragon of fast-food, California's In-N-Out, but not any of the others. (I did eat a steak dinner at Peter Luger many years ago, but I obviously have to return for the burger.)

Let's see how quickly I can go through Richman's list, shall we?

The loudest band in New York

2008-07-12T19:07:00.004-04:00

I love free concerts. A free concert is like free food, except better, because when Ben & Jerry's gives away ice cream on Free Cone Day, you get a paltry, unsatisfying dollop of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough that lasts about three minutes on a hot day. A free concert is like an ice cream that lasts all evening. And depending on who's playing the show, you might end up with a natural high and a headache at the end of it, just like an evening-long ice cream.

The South Street Seaport is but one place in the city that you can see bands perform for free on a weekly basis. I wrote about the final show of last year's Seaport Music Festival here. Compared to last year's lineup (which included The National and Battles and Menomena and Au Revoir Simone), this year's list seemed less than exciting, but one band jumped right out at me: A Place to Bury Strangers.

You may never have heard them, but you've heard of bands like them -- bands whose reputation precedes them. I still remember one spring night in 2004 when I first heard of a band named Mute Math from my buddy Won. "You gotta listen to these guys," he said, handing me a demo CD. "They're probably the best band I've ever seen." Listening to the demo was like taking a shower on a weekday afternoon: unexpected and invigorating and optimistic.

In the case of A Place to Bury Strangers (APTBS), I'd heard one thing about them that's supposed to tell you everything you need to know about them: The Loudest Band in New York. Virtually every review I've read contains this description, but who can say who originated the phrase. Maybe the band made it up themselves. Maybe it's not important. But if you know me, you'll know that it's impossible for me not to seek out a band that lays claim to being the loudest in a city full of loud bands.

I mean, come on! THE LOUDEST BAND IN NEW YORK!

Apparently, this is a band so loud that the cops once shut down one of their shows, but not until an NYPD officer declared, "This band is sick."

So three Fridays ago, I went to see them at the Seaport Music Festival. The first opening band was Black Acid, who were just finishing their set when I got there. It's hard to feel bad about missing a band called Black Acid, so I didn't. Then the most bizarre band in the world took the stage -- a second opening act called King Khan and the Shrines. (Do not visit their Myspace page unless you're sure you want to.) These guys are so obscure they don't even have their own Wikipedia entry. It was their first show in the United States, apparently, so nobody knew any of their songs, but that didn't stop them from rocking out. They played a hyperactive blend of ska, '50s rock-n-roll, and punk, if you can imagine that. Oh yeah, they had a whole brass section. And a go-go dancer who belly-danced and waved gold pompoms on stage during the entire set. And their drummer had more facial hair than ZZ Top. And -- get this -- the lead singer was a foul-mouthed Indian man who sounded like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and looked like he'd just walked off the set of a Bollywood blockbuster.

This band was a menace to the public, who, against their better judgment, began dancing in the middle of Pier 17 like the maniacs dancing on the stage. King Khan was inscrutable and indefatigable and hilarious; for forty-five minutes, he whipped the crowd into an awe-struck frenzy of laughter and herky-jerky hopping.

Now, this was interesting. These guys were supposed to open for APTBS, which struck me as a tad dissonant. This became evident when, at about 8:30 PM, APTBS took the stage to a long, metallic rumble from lead singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann. In my mind, there are three things to understand about Ackermann:

He makes his own guitar pedals.
He is the only guitarist on the band, which means he has to make the most noise.
He does not interact with the crowd at live shows very much at all. He didn't even address us when the band started the set, which is not that weird once you realize that APTBS is just a shoegaze band that happens to play very loud music.

When APTBS really got going, things started getting dangerous and weird. Dangerous because the band really is, quite possibly, the loudest band in this city. Weird because a band that straddles the two genres of shoegaze and noise rock is bound to attract different kinds of people who may not necessarily get along with one another. This became clear when three young people who looked like they'd just stepped off a plane from the Glastonbury Festival began moshing in the front, bumping violently into people in the process. Two guys standing directly behind them decided that this was rude behavior and weren't afraid to say so, at which point the wild trio stopped just long enough to shrug their shoulders and went right back at it. This was weird because I'm not usually conflicted about what constitutes proper behavior at any given rock concert. I mean, when you're at a rock show, you rock out. But when you're at a shoegaze rock show, and the stage lights remain dim for most of the set, are you only supposed to gaze at the musicians gazing at their shoes?

At one point, the music was so loud that even the press photographers (who were standing behind the speakers, not in front of them) had to cover their ears. I have never covered my ears at a rock show before; to me, that's like closing your eyes if the view at a tropical beach becomes too beautiful. I looked around at the people standing next to me and 75% of them had their fingers in their ears. The other 25% looked back at me in a funny way, as if to say, "Our ears won't be okay in the morning, will they?"

APTBS played a blistering 40-minute set, during which Ackermann destroyed his red Fender Jaguar and then hurled it over his head by its strings. Then, with a muffled "thank you" and a rapid brightening of the stage lights, it was unceremoniously over. The crowd dispersed quickly, dazed and slightly disoriented.

I couldn't hear much for the next 24 hours.

Duck and hen

2008-07-10T00:13:00.004-04:00

Tonight, I did two things I've never done before, and both were done at the Marshall Stack, a beer-and-wine bar in the Lower East Side. Hang on a minute, I asked incredulously the first time I heard of the place. There's an actual bar called "The Marshall Stack"? We must go there immediately! I mean, seriously: I can hardly think of a better name for a bar.

The first thing: I ordered a duck sandwich. I didn't do this blindly, in case you were wondering. Marshall Stack's duck club sandwich has been talked up by Gothamist as one of New York's standout sandwiches. It was delicious indeed -- a greasy assemblage of sliced duck breast, crispy bacon and Romaine lettuce drenched in horseradish sauce. I ate it standing at the bar. Price: $11.00.

The second thing I did tonight: I had an Old Speckled Hen. Not another sandwich, but an English ale. The Stack has an appropriately extensive and eclectic beer list -- even Sapporo is available -- but you just don't pass up the opportunity to try something called Old Speckled Hen. It turned to be a beautiful golden ale, with a caramel texture, if perhaps a tad too much sweetness. Delicious, nonetheless.

If it wasn't already obvious, the moral of today's blog post is: I'm a sucker for a good name.

Short notes: Fourth of July Edition

2008-07-07T00:01:00.002-04:00

Some notes about this past weekend:

I attended no barbecues, witnessed no fireworks and barely saw any sunshine, but it still felt like a pretty decent Independence Day weekend. Usually, staying at home would hardly be an appropriate prescription for the long weekend, but I needed the rest, and the weather was terrible anyway. One thing helped: I bought a pack of hot dogs (not the nitrite-free kind that they sell at Whole Foods, but the ones made from floor sweepings -- you know, the really good kind) and had my own hot dog eating contest, in which I competed against myself. Okay, perhaps it wasn't as extreme as this one, but you have to understand that I don't eat many hot dogs any more, so this was a special thing for me.
Lesson learned the hard way: If you want the most satisfying hot dog-eating experience, never buy whole-wheat buns.
Summer time would seem incomplete without seeing a Will Smith film, so to honor the tradition, the wife and I saw Hancock. It was aight.
That reminds me of an idea I had for a blog called One Word Film Reviews. For example, the review for Wall-E would be: Heartbeeps.
On Thursday night, we went out with some friends to Corner Bistro, where I was out-eaten by a 98-lb film actress and out-guzzled by a Maori guy who named his dog after a New Zealand pale ale. Details will definitely not be forthcoming.
The weekend ended on a good note. By "good note" I mean that the Yankees beat the Red Sox 5-4 in extra innings tonight. Yes, I have officially become a Yankees fan.
And finally, a shout-out to my buddy over at Wonkitime who, along with his lovely wife and kids, took us to a Thai restaurant in the Upper West Side for lunch today. I ordered pineapple fried rice (with chicken) and spent the better part of two hours trying to figure out what made it taste so good. It didn't hit me until I was on the 2-train heading downtown, still licking my lips. We never used much of this in our kitchen growing up, but lots of Malaysians did: Maggi Seasoning Sauce.

Three New Yorks

2008-07-03T18:43:00.003-04:00

Excerpted from "Here is New York" by E.B. White, written in 1948 but so true that it could have been written yesterday:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. ...

When ballers play soccer

2008-06-25T19:28:00.005-04:00

I'm not the regretful type, but today, I really wished I had a genuine Spalding basketball. You see, if I'd owned one, I could have brought it down to Nike Field in Sara D. Roosevelt Park this evening, whereupon the likes of Baron Davis, Jason Kidd, Leandro Barbosa and Steve Nash would have gladly signed their names on its bumpy leather surface.

Alas, all I had was a France national soccer team t-shirt, and Thierry Henry left before I could persuade him to autograph it.

See what I mean by regret? How often does Steve Nash organize a free charity football match in New York's Lower East Side in which some of the NBA's best players rub shoulders with international soccer stars like Henry, Salomon Kalou, Claudio Reyna, Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman?

Okay, I'm not entirely disappointed. After all, I got to pat Baron Davis's sweaty shoulder (yes, I had to reach up to do so).

Maybe the problem was that I got there too late. The game started at 5:30 PM, and by the time I arrived, there were only ten minutes until halftime. It took me all of halftime to wriggle my way to the front of the crowd of several thousand who were clinging to the fence surrounding the field (if you've never seen an urban soccer field before, it's basically a small pitch with no bleachers and a twenty-foot fence on the perimeter).

Everyone stood to watch, but it was worth it -- some of the world's best athletes were playing the beautiful game right in front of us. Steve Nash, a wizard with any rolling object, scored multiple times, athletically so. Fellow Phoenix Sun Leandro Barbosa, aka The Brazilian Blur, was on the same team, playing a sport he must have seemed destined to excel at growing up until sidetracked by basketball (of all things). On the other team, Jason Kidd wasn't half bad, but Baron Davis was by far the weakest player, lumbering around in orange Reeboks, black-rimmed glasses and a baseball hat. To be fair, everyone seemed to be having fun, especially Davis, who jawed with the crowd amiably. And it was hilarious to watch basketball players out of context. That defender looks really familiar. Hey, that's because he's Raja Bell!

It almost goes without saying that the pro soccer players performed well, but Thierry Henry seemed out of it, despite hearing pockets of the crowd chant his name. Kalou was the most active, scurrying all over the pitch and playing give-and-go with Kidd.

At the end of regulation, I didn't even know or care what the final score was. The small crowd that was allowed to sit within the fence quickly rushed the field and surrounded the players, Sharpies and jerseys in hand. I squeezed through a hole in the fence and tried looking for Henry, but he'd already been whisked away into a large black SUV. If I'd gotten to the game earlier, I would have noticed the SUVs were the best place to wait for players post-final-whistle. Kidd and Nash were being mobbed, but since I had nothing for them to sign, I decided to leave. Baron Davis evidently had the same idea -- he walked out the gate just as I did. I didn't have anything for him either, so I simply patted him on the shoulder (twice), wiped my hand on the France t-shirt, and said, "Good game, Baron," as the mob implored Davis to move to New York and play for the Knicks.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, and it is true: I now have Baron Davis's sweat on my t-shirt. Yes, I am wearing it right now. Who needs Thierry Henry's autograph?

Yankee dandy

2008-06-19T23:57:00.009-04:00

Man, I'm over the moon about this one: Last night, I went to my first Yankees game at Yankee Stadium, where, perhaps for the first time in years, I felt like a kid again.

It's the lights that got me. I arrived at the stadium, handed my ticket over, pushed through a turnstile, walked down a tunnel, and was suddenly confronted by a battery of white floodlights. Then I utterly forgot that it was raining, that I'd spent $5 just to check my bag in a locker, that I'd be spending many more dollars on hot dogs and chicken fingers and beer, that my seat was all the way in the upper deck. This was Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, the home of champions. Everything around me was a reminder of the dominance of the New York Yankees, the most successful North American franchise in professional sports history. I felt small and inexperienced and apprehensive. Do I belong here? I wondered. Do I know enough about the sport of baseball to enjoy this? Am I going to witness history tonight? Where are the bathrooms?

There's somewhat of a backstory to this. For most of my life, baseball had been nothing but a stereotype -- "America's favorite pastime" -- with impenetrable rules. About the only thing I knew was that a guy throws a ball, another guy hits the ball with a wooden bat and runs around a diamond, stepping on bases as he does so, and if he's lucky or good, he gets back to home plate and scores. But I knew virtually nothing else. I never had to; I grew up on the baseball-free island of Borneo, where the favorite pastime is watching American documentaries about Borneo just to laugh at the way Westerners pronounce "orangutan."

The last two years of my life I spent teaching myself the ins and outs of the game, mostly because I felt ashamed for being an American resident who was completely ignorant of baseball. [A similar shame prompted me to learn, among other things, the rules of American football, how to sing "America the Beautiful", and how to identify American Idol winners by hairstyle.]

I don't claim to know that much about baseball, but one thing I know is that you can learn an awful lot, even if you're as ignorant as I was, just by watching Yankees games on TV. So until last night, that's exactly what I'd been doing for two years.

But man, nothing beats going to a game in the Bronx. My co-worker and friend CSG had two free tickets and offered one to me, and even though I'd already made plans for the evening, there really wasn't a question of whether I should take the ticket.

The thing about baseball is that if it's raining hard enough, they'll delay the game, which is how we found ourselves sitting in a summer downpour waiting for the clouds to roll off. About an hour after the game was supposed to have started, a rainbow appeared over the stadium, and the sky cleared up. Game on!

If you really want to know how the game went, read the Associated Press recap here. I'm here to tell you about the things I didn't know from simply watching a game on TV:

The best deal on concessions is the chicken fingers, by far. I mean, they weren't cheap -- this is a pro sporting event, after all -- but they're a better deal than a $5.25 no-frills hot dog. Even the New York Times agrees somewhat. Here's a list of great ballpark food (go here and click on New York).
The beer sellers only call out "last call!" to get you to buy beer. They stuck around at least 45 minutes after "last call."
If you buy a bag of Cracker Jacks for $5.75, just give the vendor $6.00 and tell him to keep the change.
The people around us all seemed to know each other. At first, I thought they were one big family who'd come out to see the game together, but then I realized that they were all season-ticket holders and had come to know each other as neighbors.
During the rain delay, the stadium played "Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow over the PA system. It seemed like a cruel joke. But then they played some Springsteen and Sinatra and all was forgiven.
Women in the Bronx have really big chests. It sort of makes it hard for them to climb up to the nosebleed seats in the upper deck.
Yankee Stadium feels like it was built for champions. The outfield grass is immaculate. The upper deck rises sharply around the field, almost majestically, like walls of a canyon. Even I, a mere spectator, felt like a champ.
It was also thrilling to hear Bob "The Voice of Yankee Stadium" Sheppard announce the players over the PA, especially when he pronounced Derek Jeter's name. "Now batting for the Yankees... shortstop... number two... Derek... Jeetuh... number two."
It's sort of a cliché, but you know what else you can hear? The sound a bat makes when it smacks a ball out of the field for a home run -- one of the greatest noises in sports.

You know those Japanese or Singaporean or Filipino people who grow up listening to Elvis Presley and then decide in their old age to make a pilgrimage to Memphis just to see where The King lived and died? That's not how I felt when I went to Yankee Stadium. I didn't grow up watching baseball. I didn't even try to make it out to Yankee Stadium in the four years I've been in New York. I don't worship the likes of A-Rod and Jeter. Jorge Posada is not my favorite Puerto Rican.

But when the Yankees won the game, and Sinatra's "New York, New York" came booming out of the speakers, and thousands of jubilant New Yorkers sang along, I couldn't help but join in. It was a great day to be in the greatest city on earth.

Close encounter of the naked kind

2008-06-01T20:47:00.002-04:00

I'd just arrived in the city from church in Jersey this afternoon, guitar case in hand. As I crossed Seventh Avenue, who should I see but the Naked Cowboy. He was walking down Seventh headed in my direction, bare muscles rippling, strumming his white guitar and singing at the top of his substantial lungs. For one terrifying moment, our eyes met, and I thought I'd find myself in some bizarre guitar duel a la Crossroads, my soul on the line. And then he sang his next verse, I kept walking up 32nd Street, and it was over.

Single in the city

2008-05-30T19:21:00.003-04:00

I read once that New York is a great place to go if you're single, because they're so many other single people, but when you've been married for almost four years like I have, it's hard to know what that feels like. Well, except when Sarah jets off to Milan for a week. Then it sort of feels like I'm single again, but for one fact: When I was single, I never lived alone. I lived with a couple of guys in a decrepit, unsafe building that was torn down the month after we moved out. Then I moved with a bunch of guys into a townhouse in which we staged tournaments of the poker and Halo variety, and occasionally slept (that is, when we weren't trying in vain to deactivate a housemate's car alarm in a torrential rainstorm at 4:00 AM).

So I don't quite understand what it means to be really single; I've never lived alone. But this week, with Sarah in Italy again, I decided to see what it feels like being single in New York. Naturally, I started by going to a bar.

A couple I knew invited me to hang out at 230 Fifth, a rooftop bar, on Sunday night, the night Sarah left. It was perfect! I thought I'd arrive two hours late, chat for a bit with friends I hadn't seen in a while, and drink a couple of beers. Then I'd go home and congratulate myself for being social and convivial. And the best part was that the day after was Memorial Day, a national holiday.

I tried calling and texting the people who were supposed to be there, but no one was answering their phone. Must be so noisy that they can't hear, I thought.

It's a good thing I bothered to wear a button-down shirt and nice shoes, because when I arrived at the place at 11:00 PM, there was a sign at the door ordering me to "dress to impress" or something like that. Eight bouncers stood at the door. Okay, maybe there weren't eight, but there were at least three, which still seems to me like a lot. Obviously, this was a classy joint. They checked my ID and waved me through, and I got in an elevator with a yuppie and a hulk of a man who -- surprise -- was another bouncer. "Couple of marines threw a bottle of water off the roof," the hulk said, shaking his head. It was Fleet Week in the city, so it didn't seem out of the ordinary that a bunch of military men might have gotten frisky at a club. "The guys downstairs said it sounded like a garbage bag hitting the sidewalk."

"I thought you guys only used plastic bottles up there," I said.

"We do," the hulk said, looking at me like a pitbull looks at a nugget of dry dog food. "You think a plastic bottle can't kill a man from twenty stories up?"

And with that, the door slid open. I followed the yuppie -- who obviously knew where he was going -- up a flight of stairs, through a small crowd waiting to use the bathrooms, and out onto the roof, into a crowd of beautiful people.

Here is why I don't normally go to places like rooftop bars in Manhattan: Half the people seemed to be checking out the other half, which is exactly what you do in bars when you're single. But I wasn't single; I was merely pretending! I wasn't looking to pick anyone up. I wasn't even there to meet new people. So it was a little annoying being on the receiving end of four hundred pairs of judgmental eyes as I snaked through the crowd trying to locate the couple I knew and failing miserably. Why wasn't anyone answering his or her phone?

Here's another reason why I don't do the rooftop bar thing: A quarter of the people were wearing red bathrobes, which are apparently handed out to patrons to stave off the chilly air. Even the guys were wearing red bathrobes. I couldn't think of a less manly thing.

I decided that since I was already there, I'd get a drink at the bar and wait around to see if my friends showed up. Big mistake. My Sapphire and tonic cost $13. The bartender was generous with the Sapphire, but this was rooftop robbery served in a plastic cup.

There were some nice things about the place. The view was impressive, especially since the Empire State Building, just a few blocks away, was lit up spectacularly in red, white and blue for Memorial Weekend. The place was spacious and comfortable and well designed, which is boring in theory but not in practice. It would've been a great place to hang out for a few hours if you were with friends. But alone and married, I was feeling like 98-pound nerd at a pickup game in Rucker Park.

I took a swig of my drink and called my friend one more time. He finally answered and told me that he and his wife had made a last-minute trip to Indiana because his sister was having a baby. "Great," I said. "Is anyone else going to be here?"

"I don't know," he said. I imagined him at a hospital in Fort Wayne. He would not be wearing a red bathrobe. "AW and JC are supposed to be there. Sorry we didn't tell you that we wouldn't be there. It was a last-minute trip."

AW and JC were two guys I didn't know that well, but I tried calling AW's number anyway and got nothing but voicemail. That's it, I told myself as I downed my drink, I'm leaving.

My attempt at living it up single-style had completely flopped. I took the elevator down, left through the back entrance, and proceeded to walk in the opposite direction of home for four blocks before I realized that I was going the wrong way. It was almost midnight. I needed to pick myself up from my sour mood. So, naturally, I went to a restaurant and ate dinner alone.

Believe it or not, this was kind of a happy ending to my night. While I consider it slightly sad to dine solo, there's also something romantic about doing it, and only the most secure people can truly enjoy it without the benefit of a distraction, such as a book. Location has everything to do with it, so I picked a 24-hour French cafe called L'Express on Park Avenue. The gentle arches and lazy ceiling fans made me feel like I was in Morocco, but the bottle-festooned bar was straight out of a Manet painting. I ordered a prosciutto omelet and briefly considered asking the chef to hold the scallions, but thought better of it.

I was the only solo diner in the place who wasn't drinking an alcoholic beverage.

But the omelet was superb, the accompanying fries and salad were good, and I decided to forgo ketchup to keep the experience as authentic as possible. This must be what it's like to live the life of a single artist in Paris, I thought. I was Toulouse-Lautrec. I was Picasso. I was Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge.

Then I paid for my authentic French experience with a portrait of Andrew Jackson.

I'm going to need a bigger pan

2008-05-23T23:31:00.003-04:00

I was at Whole Foods today when I came across some ostrich eggs for sale, nestled in a straw-lined wooden crate. Holy smokes, they were huge. I picked up the biggest one and cradled it in my hands -- it was like holding something primeval. They were going for $29.99 each, which is astronomical in my opinion, especially since one 3-pound egg is the equivalent of 18-24 chicken eggs, which go for $3.79 a dozen. I didn't buy any, but I haven't stopped thinking about them all day. I'll try and take pictures next time.

Save the earth -- live in New York

2008-05-20T22:11:00.002-04:00

You should read the current issue of Wired for the cover story on how nothing else we are doing to help save the environment will matter if we don't do everything we can to stop global warming. But here's the shocker: Things that we used to think as harmful to the earth are now the very things we should be doing. Like cutting down forests. It sort of makes sense. Read the story here.

The thing that got my attention was the section on urban living. Apparently, "urban living is kinder to the planet, and Manhattan is perhaps the greenest place in the US. A Manhattanite's carbon footprint is 30% smaller than the average American's." That makes sense too. Sarah and I don't own a car, so our commutes don't contribute to greenhouse gases. We live in an apartment building, among "the most efficient dwellings to heat and cool." We have easy access to local produce, recycling facilities and electric buses and trains. These things are hardly within our realm of responsibility -- they're simply incidental to our geography.

Taco swell

2008-05-03T19:56:00.003-04:00

Man I love Mexican food, and that's a problem. It's a problem because there are no good-n-cheap Mexican places in New York, and especially not in lower Manhattan. In Los Angeles, it seemed like you could get two-dollar fish tacos anywhere, and they'd be good.

This is the part where I'm supposed to say: "So you can imagine my joy when I discovered two-dollar fish tacos available just down the street in NoLIta." Alas, I cannot say such a thing. The next best thing is to report that I've been enjoying the food at Pinche Taqueria, a new-ish Mexican hole-in-the-wall just a block away from my apartment.

The weirdest thing about Pinche Taqueria is it seems to be run by people who skipped elementary math in kindergarten. A co-worker of mine, the first person I know who ate there, reported that when the cashier rang him up for three tacos, she charged him $14, much more than the $10 that it should have cost. When he pointed out the discrepancy, she just shrugged her shoulders as if to say that it was $14 because the cash register said so in bright green LCD numbers, no question about it.

Tonight, when I ordered a carne asada burrito, one fish taco, and a cup of horchata, I should have been charged a little over $14. Instead, the guy running the register quoted me $26.18.

"Wait a minute," I protested, credit card in hand. "I ordered a burrito for $6.95, a fish taco for $3.75 and horchata for $2.75." Even with sales tax, $26.18 was an obvious mistake.

"I must have added your order to the previous customer's order," the hoodie-clothed guy said. He re-entered my items and everything came out fine, but he never apologized, and never gave me the slightest confidence that he wouldn't make the same mistake with a customer less alert than me. It was such a glaring error that I'm sure he wasn't trying to rip me off on purpose, but the fact that this has happened more than once is worrying. If they're careless with their accounting, what else might they be careless about?

Still, the food is great. I wish I could describe the quality of the breaded mahi mahi in the taco tonight, but it was so good that I ate the whole thing in three bites, so I have no idea, really. The burrito was good as well, though the beef was very dry and needed more sauce; it's a good thing I took the two free containers of green salsa I was offered. The burrito also came with corn salsa chips, which I've always enjoyed eating with the rest of the food instead of as an appetizer.

If you love spicy Mexican food like I do, you'll need to order a horchata, which, at Pinche Taqueira, is made with organic rice milk, cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar. Nothing washes down better.

The best things I've had are the breakfast burritos. I really wanted one tonight (preferably with chorizo sausage and scrambled eggs) but when I asked if they were still serving them, the hoodie guy had to turn to his kitchen staff and ask. They said no. It was 7:00 PM. Evidently, unlike at IHOP, breakfast is not served around the clock here.

One thing I thought I'd never do

2008-04-24T00:49:00.003-04:00

I thought I'd never do this: Eat those White Castle burgers from the freezer section of the supermarket.

But living in New York will change a guy. Listen, I love White Castle. When I lived in New Jersey, there was a White Castle two miles down the road. At 2:00 in the morning, when you're hungry as all get-up after a night of playing Halo, White Castle is the greatest thing in the world. When I was in college, I routinely got a sack of ten cheeseburgers (plus fries, plus Coke) and ate it in one sitting. Usually I washed it all down with Tabasco. But I never, ever thought I'd stoop so low as to buy a box of frozen sliders.

So what drove me to it? Well, it all started with a Saturday night party at the Bowery Hotel. And then a few drinks were involved, including, uh, tequila shots that someone else bought for us. And then there's the need to soak up that alcohol with something really greasy and salty. So wifey suggests we go to the deli and get Hot Pockets. But then I see something that looks about a hundred times better than Hot Pockets:[Okay, I know that we should have just gone to White Castle and gotten fresh-made sliders, but the closest WC was 36 blocks away. Plus, on the entire island of Manhattan, there are only three WC franchises, according to the website.]

So I bought a box, took it home, and nuked them. And then we ate. They were -- much like deep-fried Twinkies -- absolutely delicious and disgusting at the same time.
Some notes about the burgers:

They came out of the box in plastic-wrapped packages of two. I don't know why they didn't just package all six of them in one plastic wrapper. Who eats only two White Castle burgers at a time?
They had only the meat patty, cheese and onions between the buns. No ketchup like the fresh-made ones do. I added my own.
They tasted exactly like they're supposed to.
They reminded me of this.

Waiting to hear a voice

2008-04-05T19:09:00.004-04:00

You know how Kanye West once said that he'd have cut off a piece of his finger to have a voice like Wu-Tang's Ol' Dirty Bastard? Well, that's almost exactly how I feel about Mike Doughty's voice.

I'm 90% sure that you have no idea who Mike Doughty is, but that's okay. In 1996, I heard a song by a band named Soul Coughing, and the lead singer had the most arresting alternative rock voice I'd ever heard. I mean, it's the kind of voice you never forget, and never mistake for anyone else's. So, 11 years later, when my friend BM played some dude's solo record in his car stereo as we drove toward Union, NJ, on a Wednesday evening, I recognized the voice. And it turned out that the dude's name is Mike Doughty, and he used to be the lead singer of Soul Coughing. And it turned out that last night, BM and I went to see a Mike Doughty show at the Highline Ballroom.

I met BM outside the Highline at 7:45, which was 45 minutes after wait-list tickets were supposed to go on sale. He was still waiting, but at least he was first in line. There were about ten other poor souls behind him who liked Mike Doughty enough to wait for wait-list tickets but not enough to have bought tickets in advance.

BM really wanted to see the show. I am not nearly as a big a fan as BM -- I don't have any Mike Doughty albums, and I've only heard four Soul Coughing songs ever -- so I wouldn't have been terribly disappointed if we hadn't gotten in. But at 8:30, we finally did get in, plunked down $25 each for tickets, and shuffled into the Ballroom, a small-ish performance space with the requisite black walls and a stage low enough that you could step onto it from the floor without much trouble, but not, of course, if you were five feet tall.

A bunch of guys in fake beards and funny hats were already on stage playing some vaguely interesting music. The music seemed improvised, but it was like the band was making it look more improvised than it really was. Two of them sang into various microphones, but as far as I could tell, they weren't singing a lick of English, or any other intelligible language. If Tenacious D were from Lithuania, and had a bassist and a drummer, they'd have sounded just like this. Then they stopped playing, and BM went to get some beers, and while waiting for the real opening act to take the stage, I commenced my favorite pastime at rock shows: I people-watched.

But then I got distracted because the heavyset guy standing in front of me had really bad body odor.

You know what's annoying? When you're standing in the crowd at a rock show, waiting for the opening band to show up, and you're so busy talking to your friend that you don't notice the six-foot-three dude with jug ears moving into position directly in front of you. And then when the band comes on, there's a living totem pole blocking your view.

After stepping to the left, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the opening band, the Panderers, who apparently are "from the great state of Indiana!" Never mind that it's a three-piece act, and two of the guys in the band aren't from Indiana. They played gritty southern rock and were catchy as all get-up. On one of the songs, singer Scott Wynn pronounced the word "iron" (as in iron bars) like "eye ron" which I thought was one of the greatest things I'd ever heard. And the drummer looked like Dave Grohl! They were hilarious and knew how to rock out, and I would have bought their album on iTunes if they'd made Scott Wynn's voice on the recording sound exactly the way it did at last night's show. Unfortunately, it sounds like a completely different guy.

At one point, Wynn asked if there was anyone in the audience named Sheila, and since there didn't appear to be any, some dude in the back started yelling and jumping and claiming he was named Sheila. Then the band played a song called "Sheila" and Wynn sang it to him anyway. I guess new artists will do whatever they can to sell records.

After the Panderers had left the stage, BM and I started talking to the excitable 23-year-old kid with a goatee standing in front of us. I never got his name, but we'll call him Jake. Jake was a huge Doughty fan; he said he considered Mike Doughty the third-best live performer he'd ever seen (the best was System of a Down, and the second was Tool). Then he told us that he'd be happy if Doughty played a Soul Coughing song called "True Dreams of Wichita." Jake could tell that I wasn't a true fan of Doughty's, so he spent most of his time addressing BM. Later, when Jake wandered off to the front, BM turned to me and said, "Have you ever met someone who just refused to stop talking?"

Another 25-minute wait, and Mike Doughty himself took the stage. Shockingly, his drummer was the same Dave Grohl-looking character. And his bassist was also the Panderers' bassist. As it turns out, two-thirds of the Panderers are also half of the Mike Doughty Band. How convenient.

Doughty was warm and funny and good, and that voice is largely undiminished in its character. He opened the set with "Busting Up A Starbucks," as good an opener as any, but throughout the night, he took requests from the audience, which, I'd learned, is common practice at a Mike Doughty show. Of course, Jake yelled out "Wichita!" multiple times, until Doughty said into the mic: "Wichita? No, not tonight." That shut up Jake for the rest of the night, but he continued to dance like a flailing maniac through songs like "I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress" and "Put It Down." It's a blessing and a curse to be a true fan.

Doughty closed the night with "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well," the only song I really knew (apart from "I Hear the Bells," which the band did as well, but poorly -- a buzzy, badly tuned mess).

One more thing... you know those guys with the fake beards earlier in the night? They were the Mike Doughty band in disguise. Who else could they have been?

If you've never heard the voice, this is hardly the best way to listen to it, but watch this anyway:

A hamburger today

2008-04-01T22:09:00.003-04:00

You may or may not care to know that I ate three cheeseburgers in the span of two days last weekend. I couldn't help myself, really. The bad part was that two of the three were eaten at popular fast food joints not known for their gourmet standards. The good part was that they were delicious.

As much as I like a good hamburger, I'm somewhat befuddled by the New York restaurant trend of serving a pricey burger. I'm not even talking about Chef Daniel Boulud's $29 DB Burger (stuffed with short ribs and foie gras). Today came news of an $81 kobe beef burger at the Old Homestead steakhouse. I bet they don't call it the Recession Special. Gothamist reports that it does come with homemade ketchup and, uh, tater-tots. Because nothing says "I'm eating the most expensive burger in New York" like a side of tater-tots.

As a point of reference, the most expensive burger I ate last weekend was the always excellent Nolita House cheeseburger, served on brioche with boursin herb cheese and fries. The damage? $12, plus tax.

21

2008-03-31T23:48:00.006-04:00

The brother-in-law's movie came out tops at the domestic box office this past weekend. To celebrate, here are twenty-one things I learned on our recent trip to Seattle and Las Vegas. [Warning: This post is a little scatter-brained, but it's hard to sum up a five-day trip in one blog post, especially if the trip included attending a movie premiere.]

1. It's true: In Seattle, it rains like the dickens.

2. The only reason I didn't get pulled over by a state trooper for driving 20 miles over the speed limit on Route 90 was because she had already arrested some other guy and was driving him off to the precinct.

3. Remember: if you go hiking downhill with a three-year-old, you're going to have to carry him on your shoulders on the way back up.

4. The only ingredients that should ever be in blueberry jam: blueberries, sugar, water, pectin.

5. The Microsoft employee store reminded me of the Princeton University Engineering Quad: lots of bespectacled Asian guys hanging around in groups of four.
6. Seattle natives are shoddy dressers, but they make up for it by being awfully nice.

7. People who travel to Vegas to attend a convention will tell everyone around them. The ones who go for any other reason won't say a word.

8. Vegas tap water tastes horrible.

9. Vegas buffets are a good deal, but if you only have a half-hour to eat, nothing is a good deal.

10. It pains me to say this, but the cocktail waitresses at Caesar's Palace look like they just came off the bus from the retirement home.

11. I discovered there are three movie-related things that make me cry with joy: The opening credits for Superman: The Movie. Any Pixar film. And listening to the soundtrack to Rudy.

12. Noise-canceling headphones are nice for everyday use, but where they really earn their keep is on a trans-continental flight.

13. Carrying open containers of liquor on the Vegas Strip appears to be a perfectly legal activity.

14. Being a real movie star must be tiring, especially for the facial muscles.
15. Even in Vegas, it's impossible to find a place that sells bottles of vodka at 2:00 in the morning.

16. Emeril Lagasse's restaurant at the MGM Grand is good, not great. But they do have an awesome metal fish sculpture at the entrance.

17. Kevin Spacey is taller than I thought he'd be. The IMDb says he's 5-feet-10-and-a-half, which sounds about right.

18. There is nothing much different about the Playboy Club at the Palms compared to any other Vegas club, which I guess says something about Vegas.

19. Vegas showgirls are not that sexy -- all those feathers and sequins are kind of scary, actually.

20. If you tip the bathroom attendant at the Living Room in Planet Hollywood, he will offer you a breathmint.

21. People will tell you that you have to experience Vegas in small doses. They say you can't stay longer than three days, because it'll drive you crazy. I say: as long as you step outdoors for three hours of daylight each day, you could probably stay a whole week.

Knife point

2008-03-28T19:01:00.002-04:00

I normally don't recycle news stories, but this one is just plain special: A Bronx man got mugged on his way home from work, and, instead of calling the cops or shouting for help, offered to give the mugger his coat, then took him out to dinner. Read the story here, and be humbled.

By the way, being mugged can be demeaning at least and life-threatening at most. One of my old co-workers got mugged on the way home from work -- he was jumped by a small group of youths just a few blocks from his home in Brooklyn. They wanted his iPhone and his wallet, and took both forcibly, never giving him the chance to hand over the items himself.

Paddy wagon

2008-03-15T00:34:00.005-04:00

"The Irish been coming here for years," Bono sang about New York. "Feel like they own the place." The sentiment is truest on Saint Patrick's Day, which is this coming Monday. Monday, as days of the week go, is possibly the day least associated with any kind of social drinking. And it is therefore the best day to have an excuse to drink.

Of course, I'm too old to need an excuse to drink. Also, I'm approximately 0.00% Irish -- one look at my face and you'd know it, too. So it was heartwarming, if a little strange, to be greeted this evening by a car full of Irish-American ruffians on the street shouting "Happy Saint Patrick's Day!" in my face as music by the Dropkick Murphys blasted on the stereo. After all, who cares if you're Irish or not? In a city still populated by perpetrators of hate crime, it's refreshing to know that some people enjoy sharing holiday cheer, even if Saint Paddy's Day isn't, you know, a real holiday.

On the road again

2008-03-11T02:48:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the lack of recent posts. The wife and I are on a much-needed vacation. We're in Seattle for the moment, but tomorrow we head to Las Vegas, a city so unoriginal that it decided to build a replica of Manhattan and fill it with slot machines.

More lights and cameras, no action

2008-02-28T18:40:00.003-05:00

They're at it again. What began last week has developed into a full-blown shoot; film crews closed off Mott Street to vehicular traffic and rolled in their equipment this morning, chief among them the awesomely named SuperTechno camera crane. [I looked it up -- the SuperTechno 30 costs well over $2000 a day to rent, and hiring the guy who operates it costs another $550 per ten hours.] Tonight, they strung up lights in the trees and are filming a night scene on the corner of Mott and Prince. I can hear the Paramount Production Support trucks outside my window right now.
I went home for lunch this afternoon, hoping to catch a glimpse of actual filming, but was disappointed. This is common, of course. Very little "action" happens on film sets; most of the time, you sit around and wait. And no, no sightings of stars Isla Fisher or Hugh Dancy, though I didn't try very hard. I did, however, brush past the director sitting in the proverbial director's chair on my way back to the office. Boy, did he look bored.

To be honest, I'm not much a gawker. Will Smith filmed parts of I Am Legend outside my office in SoHo, and although I heard that there were throngs of people hoping to get an autograph, I was not among them. If I were a celebrity, I'd want to be left alone. Do unto others, I say.

Saturday night ride

2008-02-23T23:02:00.007-05:00

The best time to ride the NYC subway is on a Saturday night. That's when you run across the most compelling cross-section of New Yorkers and bridge and tunnel people.
---
Tonight, I stepped into the uptown E train with my guitar case and sat across from two guys who eyed me suspiciously. One of them literally eyed me with one eye -- he had a big black eyepatch over his left eye. Both men were dressed in black from head to booted toe, looking like a pair of Eastern European assassins. Perhaps they wondered if my guitar case contained a couple of automatic weapons. I, on the other hand, have no doubt that their leather attache cases contained Makarov pistols.
---
At the Port Authority station, a man walked past me wearing a cowboy hat. You don't see many of those in this part of the world.
---
Three or four Saturdays ago, I was carrying my guitar case toward the uptown F train platform. A gaggle of teenage girls stopped me and asked if I was carrying a keyboard. "It's a guitar," I said. "Ooh, I love the guitar," one of the said through a mouthful of braces. Later, they met me again on the platform and one of them came right up to me and pretended to take my guitar case, as if we were buddies waiting for the bus at school.
---
I've blogged about my guitar case before, and nothing much has changed. I'm still getting approached by all kinds of people who would normally never give me a second glance, like the massive dude at Port Authority who looked like he could play center for the Knicks. "Is that a Fender Strat in there, man?" he yelled. I told him no it's a Parker, and expected him to say, "A what?" but he surprised me by saying, "Oh, you got a Fly in there." I wanted to shake his hand.

Rare Air

2008-02-21T23:56:00.005-05:00

When I was a kid, I really wanted a pair of Nike basketball shoes. I never got them because they were expensive, and a growth spurt meant that my feet outgrew new shoes in mere weeks, a fact that my parents took pains to drill into my 13-year-old head.

Remember back in the late '80s and early '90s when Air Jordans were just about the coolest things you could put on your feet? I'm not much of sneakerhead, and I never gave Jordans much thought until a couple of years ago when the red Jordan XX1 came out and floored me with all that beautiful suede. It's funny how you can develop an appreciation for a certain aesthetic if you are open-minded enough. I used to think Air Jordans were really funny-looking; now I think many of them are fantastic.

So that's why, today, I finally got my first pair of Air Jordans ever, the stealth XX3, and thanks to SoHo shoe retailer Michael K, I got them two days before their official release. Ah, to be an adult making his own financial decisions...
Like I said, I'm no sneakerhead, though some of my co-workers happen to be very serious about their sneakers. I mean, if they were looking for a new apartment, one of the requirements would be enough space to store at least a hundred pairs of sneakers, in shoe boxes. They are the reason that limited edition sneakers sell out fifteen minutes after they are released. I, on the other hand, own a grand total of six pairs of sneakers, three of which are so ratty that I wouldn't wear them in public. I also have one pair of Nike Air Max 360 running shoes, which are slightly, ah, under-used. So it's a big step for me to own a pair of Jordans, which is why I'm happy I waited until the XX3, the twenty-third iteration, came out (23 was Michael Jordan's jersey number, in case you somehow missed the '90s).

Now, while I love my new sneakers, I can't decide if I should wear them or leave them in the box. After all, what's the point of buying cool shoes if you don't wear them? These things are beautifully crafted; the pattern on the side is hand-stitched. On the other hand, Air Jordans generally appreciate in value over time, but only if they are deadstock (never worn, kept in the original box). Plus, there's no way I'd wear these to actually play basketball in. I'd be laughed off the court, but only after I get thoroughly schooled and the shoes get thoroughly stepped on due to my utter lack of game. So it may be a better idea to leave them in the box.

Werewolves of New York

2008-02-20T23:34:00.002-05:00

Tonight, for a brief moment, I caught the total lunar eclipse as I walked down Houston Street, and I wasn't alone. People were emerging from various watering holes to peer at the moon, which, at approximately 10:00 PM EST, was looking rather muddy, like an aged bloodstain. Alas, there was no sign of pranksters in werewolf costumes, or even real werewolves.

On location

2008-02-19T23:34:00.002-05:00

How do I know the WGA writers strike is really over? Because they're shooting movies in New York again.

Remember this post from last September? That's when I first heard about the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. I guess the location scouts decided that the street I live on would be a good place to shoot part of the film, because there was a film crew out on the street this morning. I wanted to take pictures of the real action -- they had Panavision cameras rigged to the sides of yellow cabs -- but I'd left my camera in my apartment and couldn't get it until lunchtime. By then, filming had ended and all that was left was a massive collection of lights arrays, tripods, and other important but ultimately boring things being packed up.It's not likely that I'll see the film when it eventually comes out. But if you do, and you watch a scene in which a character steps out of a cab and into a boutique with beach balls in the window, you'll know where it was shot.

Off day

2008-02-18T16:15:00.003-05:00

It's a pretty dreary Monday. As winter days go, it's insufferable. The only good thing is that it's also Presidents Day, which means I get the day off. Also, it's not Blue Monday, which, if you believe the "research," is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year, statistically. Blue Monday this year fell on January 21. I went back to look at what I'd written in this blog on January 21; it wasn't exactly puppies and bunnies and sugar-sweet sunshine.

Howard, the dunk

2008-02-17T00:23:00.002-05:00

I spent my Saturday night watching this on TV: the Orlando Magic's resident beast Dwight Howard flying toward the rim in his Superman getup to win this year's NBA Slam Dunk Contest. Hilarious and amazing. [Click through here for the full picture ©Getty Images]

Judd or junk?

2008-02-16T00:11:00.003-05:00

I learned two things in art school: (1) Art is not "anything", and (2) Some art is good, some art sucks, and you are allowed to hate both kinds.*

Well, I don't hate the art of the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, but I don't really like any of it either. And I'm writing from having experienced his artwork first-hand, not simply seeing them in books. A lot of Judds, I think, are uninteresting. But I would never dare accuse them of not being art. I wouldn't even call them "bad art" -- in fact, most Judd sculptures are really good. I just don't have a place in my heart for them.

So what's my point? The point is, I came across this brilliant and audacious quiz called Donald Judd, or Cheap Furniture? (via The Morning News), which illustrates how difficult it can be to distinguish between priceless works of art and everyday objects. Art may not be "anything" but it can certainly look like any thing. Can you tell the difference? Take the quiz here and see if you can best my score of 83% (I'd never seen any of the Judd artworks in the quiz until I took it).

*To be fair, I learned more than just two things in art school. For example, I learned turpentine is fairly poisonous, nude modeling pays $12.50 an hour if you have no experience, and painters are poorer, but nicer, than graphic designers.

Powdered

2008-02-12T19:13:00.000-05:00

Finally! 53 days into winter, New York is experiencing a good powdering. It doesn't look like it's going to last (the temperature is going up tomorrow, bringing rain), so I won't be able to do everything on my list of five favorite things to do when it snows. But it's okay. It was just nice to be able to walk outside, even if the snow is coming down really hard and the snowflakes are, much like a kiss from Angelina Jolie, big, wet and nasty. The great thing about New York when it snows is how quiet it is. Cars drive slower, there are fewer people out on the street, and all that snow smooths out the rough, echo-y edges of the sidewalks and buildings.

[The photos below and above were taken from my office in SoHo.]

Desk drives

2008-02-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Now added: zebra van, tree and monkey, safari car, elephant, and more. See previous version here.

I'm going to have to explain this zoo diorama on my work desk. On my birthday, one of my co-workers, GR, bought me a box of plastic Japanese toys. They're part of a set that, when put together, make up a mini zoo. Since three other co-workers have also had birthdays in the last month, GR went out and bought other parts of the same set. We've been putting the whole thing together on my desk.

My desk at work is 6 feet wide and probably three feet deep. Until I put the diorama together, the only things on it were my keyboard, monitor, and Wacom tablet. The funny thing is my desk at home is a junk pile. Since I spend more time at work than I do at home on most days, I guess it's not such a funny thing.

Let me eat cake

2008-02-05T21:18:00.000-05:00

Today, Tuesday, February 5th, turned out to be one heck of a day. It's Super Tuesday, which is important for reasons thoroughly detailed on this Wikipedia page (in case you were wondering, no, I did not vote today, but that's because, as a non-citizen permanent resident of the United States, I cannot vote). It was also the day of the New York Giants parade here in the City, which I wrote about in my previous post. And it's Mardi Gras, which, at least in New Orleans, is a day marked by drunken revelry, public nudity, and king cake.
What is king cake, you ask? Until this afternoon, I had no idea, but someone brought in a king cake to the office (sent from New Orleans, even) and educated me. King cake is a ring of bread and icing eaten on or around Mardi Gras, which, I decided, was a good enough reason to have a slice. No one told me about the baby, however.
Every king cake contains a little plastic baby. Guess who found it. Tradition dictates that the finder of the baby gets ten days off from work, $500 in cash, and a puppy. No, that's not true. But I wish it were, except for the puppy part. I want an electric guitar instead. If you really must know about the baby, read about it here.

Giants unseen

2008-02-05T19:46:00.000-05:00

This morning, the City hosted a ticker-tape parade for the New York Giants, who rode into town like the conquering kings they are. I and two co-workers left the office for a couple of hours to see if we could get close enough to high-five Eli Manning (yeah, right). There were three things going against us: We didn't leave early enough, we did not know anyone who worked in an office overlooking the parade route, and we were not cops.

So, along with about twenty bajillion other people, we ended up walking around lower Manhattan in circles, prevented from getting close to the parade by the NYPD's best. We had to return to our office and watch the live video feed streaming on CNN.com, but not before I snapped these photos:

About half the people wore Giants apparel. Those who didn't bring their own could buy them from sketchy street vendors peddling t-shirts with slogans like, "Patriots: From Spyin' to Cryin'." Predictably, the most popular jerseys worn were those of Manning, Strahan, Shockey, Burress and Jacobs (I also saw a couple of Gary Reasons jerseys, which looked like they hadn't been washed since 1989).

To give you an idea of how crowded it was, this photo was shot at least five blocks from the parade route.

The Naked Cowboy may rule Times Square, but the rest of Manhattan is fair game for the Naked Author, who showed up in "eye-black" face paint and little else. I'm glad I didn't have to ride next to him in a crowded subway train on the way back.

Finding it before losing it

2008-02-04T22:16:00.000-05:00

What's almost as good as finding something you lost? Finding something you didn't know you'd lost. I must have dropped a glove coming home from work, because when I took the trash out a couple of hours later, I found that someone had helpfully wedged it into the bannister of the stairs.

I've lost a couple of things since moving to New York, which is notable because I almost never lose anything. This is in contrast to my brother in his youth, who somehow managed to lose a brand-new soccer ball before he'd even had the chance to play with it, and, on another occasion, a whole shopping bag of Capri-Suns entrusted to his care (the Capri-Suns were very important because our whole thirsty family was looking forward to drinking them for the first time). My brother has since turned into a responsible adult who doesn't lose so much as his temper. But I still think about that soccer ball every now and then...

My most devastating loss happened a couple of years ago. I dropped my Wenger Swiss Army Knife that I'd been using as a keychain for almost 20 years on the street, right outside the apartment. My dad had bought the knife for me in 1988 in a mall in Singapore, on our way to Australia. It was small and discreet, almost a trinket, with a virtually useless pair of scissors built in. But it went with me to six different countries over the next eight years. I used it to open letters in Indiana, to cut leeches in half in the jungles of Borneo, to slice strawberries in Perth, and to remove tags from new clothes in Hong Kong. I only stopped traveling with it after September 11, when it became impossible to carry on an airplane. After I finally lost it in New York, the bitter lesson I learned was this:

For the love of all your favorite keepsakes, stop wearing jeans with holes in their pockets!

The strangest thing has just happened

2008-02-03T22:06:00.001-05:00

As I type this, I can hear a whole city of people yelling from their apartment windows. The New York Giants have just won the Super Bowl.

And you don't want to know the words they're using to refer to Tom Brady.

UPDATE: Now women are flashing passers-by on the street. It's like Mardi Gras out there.

Bike l'orange

2008-02-02T20:08:00.000-05:00

Spotted today at the corner of Prince and Mulberry Streets:

A few of my favorite things

2008-02-01T22:39:00.000-05:00

Thinking of moving here? Wondering what will make your NYC life much more pleasant? Here are three things I'm glad I have:

1. Noise-canceling headphones. I have the Audio Technica ANC7, which I absolutely love, but go ahead and get a pair of overpriced, overrated Bose headphones if you want. Either way, noise-canceling 'phones make a long subway ride or a noisy office much more bearable.

2. An always-loaded Metrocard. Because you never know when you'll need to rush to catch a subway train.

3. A digital video recorder, like TiVo. I have no idea how I lived without a DVR. It completely changes the way you watch TV by giving you virtually complete control over what and when you watch; I've never had to worry about getting home early enough to watch the new episode of House.

Why the caged lion sings

2008-01-29T23:47:00.000-05:00

This is the mini zoo diorama on my desk at work. I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the duck in the foreground is only half an inch tall in real life.

Saturday adventures

2008-01-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

I got sick this weekend, a consequence of having to wait in the 26-degree January air for ninety minutes just to get a table at Prune on Saturday. (That's 26 degrees Fahrenheit, you Centigraders!) I was crabby in the cold to begin with, but when we finally got in, the food and fruit juice blend (Meyer lemon, lime, orange and grapefruit) went a long way toward brightening my spirits. I remained in a good mood until that evening, when my body decided to develop a cough and fever. So, no church on Sunday. No blogging on Sunday either.

But if I had blogged on Sunday, I would have written a list of things I saw while out walking on Saturday. Here it is:

A one-eyed Pekingese on 1st Street. Pekingese dogs are funny-looking enough, but being monocular makes them downright creepy.
Three small breadfruit floating in a basin of water, at the Essex Street Market. I didn't even know what they were until I asked the Spanish-speaking fruit vendors.
A chunk of the most beautiful piece of Kobe beef I'd ever seen, in a glass case at the butcher. Also, I saw a chunk of jamón ibérico (Spanish cured ham) at the cheesemonger. Ibérico had been banned from sale in the United States until just last month, so it was the first time I'd seen it. At $99 a pound, I couldn't afford it.
And also, this was at the discount candy store:

Any way you slice it

2008-01-26T12:19:00.000-05:00

Before there was a Pizza Hut in my Malaysian hometown, my mom used to make a homemade version of pizza, which was basically a deep-dish pie filled to the gills with mushrooms, peppers and tomatoes, and baked in a Pyrex plate. I'd have a hard time finding anything like that in New York City, where the most popular style of pizza is one with a thin, chewy crust, a rich tomato sauce, plenty of mozzarella, and no toppings. I have a slice of New York-style pizza once a week, on average (I live just around the block from the first Ray's Pizzeria in New York, and only two blocks from Lombardi's, the nation's first pizzeria). But come visit me in the City and I'll take you to Luzzo's, my favorite Neapolitan pizza joint in Manhattan. We'll order one quattro stagioni and one arugola. And we'll be happier than coals in a brick oven.

Any New Yorker knows that it's hard to find good New York-style pizza outside of the City. My experience has been the farther you travel away from Northeast, the worse the pizza gets. But what do I know? Brush up on the twenty regional pizza styles in the United States by reading this article.

Aye tunes

2008-01-25T00:14:00.000-05:00

People used to ask me all the time what music I listen to. And I used to tell them that I listen to everything except country. It's a pretty standard response, especially in this part of the States. When I asked other people the same question, I often got the same response.

But that was a long time ago. Today, I do listen to country (Laura Cantrell, Faith Hill and Johnny Cash, if you're curious). I mean, I'd have to like country music if I listened to as much Christian worship music as I do. And, in fact, I heard lots of country music growing up, in the vein of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton and John Denver, who were among my dad's favorites.

If you're wondering what kind of music I listen to now, I give you my list of nine songs I listened to the most number of times in 2007 (based on strength of melody, how they hold up to repeated listens, quality of production, and general awesomeness).

"Hard Sun" Eddie Vedder
Brought tears to my eyes and shivers to the back of my neck on first listen, even if Eddie didn't actually write it.

"Slow Show" The National
Not the best song on Boxer. But it's the one with the greatest piano refrain.

"Atlas" Battles
From the year's best album, Mirrored.

"Reckoner" Radiohead
The drums and percussion on this one are astounding.

"Spilt Needles" The Shins
Amazing drum pattern, excellently recorded.

"Straight Lines" Silverchair
I was just stoked to hear Silverchair on the radio twelve years after Frogstomp.

"Come Right Out and Say It" Relient K
Very typical Relient K, but richer harmonies and tighter instrumentation elevate it.

"1234" Feist
The best mainstream single of 2007 (Rihanna's "Umbrella", though good, doesn't come close).

"Detlef Schrempf" Band of Horses
Most atmospheric song named after an ex-NBA player ever.

Bonus: Any of the following off Björk's Volta album: "Declare Independence," "Earth Intruders," "The Dull Flame of Desire," and "Innocence."

By the way

2008-01-24T23:45:00.000-05:00

Today, after work, I walked by the apartment building where Heath Ledger died. I wasn't expecting much. It's a nondescript building on Broome Street (as are most of these tony flats in this part of town), a block away from many of my favorite lunch spots. In all honesty, I didn't intend to walk past. I'm not particularly drawn to news scenes, but it was the easiest route home tonight because I was coming from the company's other office.

There were news vans parked on the block; I noticed vans belonging to Fox 5, My9, and the CW. Flash bulbs were going off among a small group of people gathered at the front door of the building. There was a huge pile of flower bouquets at the door as well.

Show business makes strangers into friends. If you watch someone on the movie or TV screen often enough, you start wondering if you might really know them. If you're taken by a piece of art, like a motion picture, you're also drawn to the one who created it. It's a human response. So here were all these humans, responding to a stranger's untimely death in the best way they knew how. Perhaps they'll go home and host a Heath Ledger film festival for their friends, as well. It doesn't seem like a bad way to remember a man.

Too fast, too furious

2008-01-23T23:40:00.000-05:00

Since I last wrote, much has happened in my sphere of interest, and I haven't processed everything. Fred Thompson dropped out of the presidential race, Bobby Flay's restaurant Mesa Grill was downgraded by the New York Times to one star, tuna sushi in the City was discovered to contain dangerous amounts of mercury, Heath Ledger died in an apartment a few blocks away from mine, and I couldn't follow any of these news stories properly because of one exhausting sixteen-hour workday.

So please forgive me if I leave it at that. I have a date with my pillow.

In the field of clover

2008-01-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

This post, despite the pilfered lyric of a title, is not about "Joker & The Thief" by Wolfmother. I sort of wish it were, though. That song rocks.

Today I saw Cloverfield. I have some brief thoughts on the movie, but they involve certain plot elements that you may not want to read about before you've seen it for yourself. So I've set my thoughts in black below. If you want to read them, just highlight the text, starting here: This was a bleak film. As promised in the trailer, the Statue of Liberty is spectacularly beheaded, and lots of very big things fall or explode, like helicopters, buildings, and a monster. Sounds like a standard action thriller, right? Wrong -- this film was depressing as all get-up. After it was over, I left the theater and walked around lower Manhattan, reliving images from the film in my head, not because I wanted to but because it was unavoidable. I know the film wasn't real, but for almost ninety minutes, I had subjected myself to the inner reality of the film. There was something horrible about watching New York City get trashed -- it was like watching my hometown get trashed. At least in I Am Legend, we don't see the city deteriorate -- we merely see the aftermath. In Cloverfield, there is no aftermath.

Cold comfort

2008-01-20T22:17:00.000-05:00

I just turned off the TV. Remember when I wrote that 2007 was a bad year for New York sports? Well, 2008 is already turning out to be a great year for the New York Giants, who have just won the NFC Championship game and are heading to the Super Bowl.

I'm not a football pundit, really, so instead of a lame post-game analysis, here are tips on how to get dinner in NYC during the half-time segment of a Giants football game, without calling ahead and ordering:

Get dressed at the end of the second quarter, preferably before the two-minute warning.
Do not pack your cell phone. If you do, your wife might call you after you leave and change her order. This must not be allowed to happen!
When the clock runs out, so should you.
Make sure you select an eatery within two blocks of where you live. I decided to go to Whole Foods, which has a prepared food section. Appropriately manly dinner options: fried chicken, mac and cheese, hot wings, french fries, potato chips, salsa and dip. Unacceptable options: sushi, any sort of green vegetables, fruit salad, cake.
Use the express checkout lane. If you have more items than allowed in the express lane, you have bought too much.
Pay using a credit or debit card. By doing so, you can begin the payment process before the checkout lady has finished scanning your items.
Be nice to the checkout lady, but don't pause to chat.
Once back home, express shock at the fact that your wife has changed the channel. Command the woman to switch back, then apologize for your rudeness and make up for it by patiently explaining the difference between a "touchdown" and an "end zone." Do not laugh at wife when she asks, "Are they at the touchdown yet?"
Enjoy the second half.

Mogul home

2008-01-18T23:45:00.000-05:00

I had dinner with some co-workers tonight. Afterwards, we left the restaurant and walked up Mercer Street in SoHo, just a few blocks away from my apartment. A black Mercedes Maybach pulled over right next to us, and out stepped two men. I barely gave them a glance as they quietly entered an apartment building. In truth, I hadn't even noticed that a $400,000 car had just deposited a couple of nondescript guys on the very sidewalk I was on until my co-worker recognized one of them. "That was Irv Gotti. The other guy must have been his bodyguard."

So now I know where Irv Gotti lives. If you don't know who Irv Gotti is, or don't care, this post is not for you.

I've got mail

2008-01-17T23:41:00.000-05:00

Every now and then, I get a Valpak in the mail -- you know, one of those envelopes stuffed with coupons and ads for services that I will never need or want. I got one today. On the front, there's an ad for CSI:NY, featuring Gary Sinise's smirking mug, and a sweepstakes promotion: "You could win a trip to New York City." I'm not even going to try entering. No one ever wins these things anyway.

Some examples of what's in the envelope: Introducing Dial-4-Limo. American Laser Centers: Hair Removal and Skin Rejuvenation. Enjoy Great Pizza at a Great Price. Free Groceries! Save Up To 20% Off Our Computer & Manual Business Checks! Why Settle for Cable?

And then, a true gem among the recycling fodder: Free Dinner Entrée - Buy one dinner entrée, get 2nd one free. It's a coupon for one of our favorite restaurants, Mottsu, the Japanese place across the street. The only thing I don't understand is why they'd bother putting the acute accent over the letter "e" in the word "entrée" and not write a grammatically correct promotional line.

Accident on the 42nd floor

2008-01-14T23:07:00.000-05:00

For the past few months, the view from my office has been gradually marred by the construction of Trump SoHo, a 42-story "hotel condominium" located at 246 Spring Street, about seven blocks away. Before the cranes and scaffolding and concrete went up, we had a pretty nice view of the Hudson River. Today, the view got even worse: one of my co-workers stared out the window and noticed that a chunk of the building looked like it had broken off.

We checked the news online. In an effective example of citizen journalism, reports and pictures from the incident were quickly available on local news sites. Gothamist, for example, put up a frequently-updated page with photos taken by neighborhood residents. I remember something similar happening on hundreds of blogs on and after September 11th, 2001.

From what I understand, a construction worker was killed when part of the building collapsed. Scary stuff, and damning for the Donald, whose building has already been in the news for all the wrong reasons multiple times in the last few months.

Oh, and the crumbled corner of the building reminded me of the posters and trailer for Cloverfield.

"You don't look scary"

2008-01-14T00:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was at Penn Station to catch a train. A woman with dark curly hair stopped me as I headed toward the ticket machines: "Can I ask you something? I would ask someone else but you don't look scary and you also look about my age."

I bet she uses the same line on everyone.

"I need to catch a bus to [a city in upstate New York whose name I now forget]. The ticket is $47 and I've gotten about $20 so far. Could you spare some money so I can get home?"

She may have also mentioned why she had no way to withdraw cash from an ATM, but I don't recall, because she spoke very quickly. I looked at her hands and saw a bus schedule and some one- or five-dollar bills. Also, I looked at her face, and although she was wrong about looking my age, she did look sincere. I gave her a $10 bill and wished her good luck getting home.

When I lived in New Brunswick, NJ, I'd often get stopped by men at the train station who claimed that they needed just a few more dollars to buy a ticket to Asbury Park, could I spare some? When I offered to buy the ticket for them outright, however, they refused. One guy made the mistake of approaching me twice in one week with the same sob story (he'd apparently lost his wallet). I gave him a look that would have made my mother disown me.

But something about Miss Curly in Penn Station made me feel some compassion. I'm not the greatest judge of character, though, so I may never know for sure if my $10 went toward that bus ticket. But I don't really care. What would you have done?

Giant step

2008-01-13T23:39:00.000-05:00

The NY Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys tonight to make it to the NFC Championship game. 2007 may have been a bad year for New York sports fans, but so far, the new year has proven victorious for NYC's favorite football team. They play the Green Bay Packers next weekend. If they win, it's off to the SuperBowl.

A point of clarification for regular readers of this blog: I am not really a Giants fan, sorry to say. Football is a new and still relatively unfamiliar sport to me, so I haven't really decided who "my team" is. You might say I'm still at the fair weather stage of football fan-hood, although I will profess longstanding admiration for Brett Favre (who, along with Marshall Faulk, was one of the few NFL players I knew by name while I was a fresh-off-the-boat, wet-behind-the-ears foreign student in Indiana).

Living in two states

2008-01-12T13:17:00.000-05:00

I've lived in New Jersey longer than I have in New York, so it's not surprising that most of my friends still live across the river from me. It's a strange set-up. I live and work in New York, but on weekends, more often than not I'll be in New Jersey (church is also in Jersey). We spent this morning (Saturday) at home, but we'll be taking the train in this afternoon to hang out with friends, Susie and Dusty.

Many have said in passing that "New York has really changed" me. It must be true to some degree. Here are three things I am doing now that I wasn't doing when I lived in the Garden State:

Listening to New York bands. One of my favorite new bands is The National, based in Brooklyn. Battles, about whom I've written before, is based in New York. Hem is from Manhattan. Still, not all New York-area bands are worth my time. I still can't listen to Interpol, and The Bravery is one annoying band.
Shopping for clothing at Bloomingdales. This one needs some explaining. For most of my life, I had a $30 limit on single clothing items. I never bought a pair of jeans that cost more than $30, nor a shirt, nor a winter coat. But at Bloomingdales, you'd be hard-pressed to find an umbrella for less than $30. I'm not saying that there aren't good clothing deals in Manhattan, but I have begun to see the value in buying quality threads that fit me properly (you can partially blame my fashion-industry wife for this awakening). There is also the fact that I work at a Manhattan ad agency to consider. But I'm also a notoriously picky shopper -- even my wife, who buys millions of dollars of clothing for a living, loses patience with me on occasion. This means that even though my jeans budget has gone up, the number of pairs I buy has gone down.
Being environmentally conscious. It's not that I wasn't before. I was buying compact fluorescent lamps and turning down my thermostat even before moving. But city living has taken that to the next level. Here, there are restaurants for locavores, and just by moving to the city, you are reducing your carbon footprint. The truth is, it's easier to be earth-friendly in New York. So why not be?

An evening with Michel Gondry

2008-01-11T23:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight, I saw Michel Gondry speak at the Apple Store in SoHo. I only found out about his free presentation a couple of hours before the event, and I couldn't leave work early enough to grab a seat in the front. So I ended up standing in the back among four hundred other people, who, judging by the number of men with impressive growths of facial hair, were mostly film geeks and would-be filmmakers.

I'm not exactly a huge fan of Gondry, but I've enjoyed the music videos he's done for Björk, and his 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was pretty good. I can't wait to see his next film, however. It's called Be Kind Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. Watch the trailer here.

To understand why Be Kind Rewind is on my must-watch list, I have to tell you about School of Rock, another Jack Black vehicle. I relate to virtually everything in School of Rock. Wanting to be in a band? Check. Teaching kids how to be a band? Check. Playing at the local Battle of the Bands? Check. Being housemates with Sarah Silverman? Let me think about that one. Actually, the thing I relate to the most is the real-world musical education part. And that's because even though both my parents were educators, I never took a day of guitar lessons in my life. It's not about which fingers go on which frets. It's all about joy and attitude.

But when I was growing up, I was also a film geek. How geeky? I built a full-scale Jabba the Hutt puppet in the living room with my brother (complete with moveable tail). I made papier mâché zombie heads with light bulbs for eyes after watching Night of the Living Dead. I could recite every line from Flash Gordon. I pilfered my dad's Bruce Lee posters. I made a cassette tape of the Conan the Barbarian orchestral score. My heroes were Frank Oz, Stan Winston and Rick Baker. I built a wire-frame T-Rex head when Jurassic Park came out. And, in what I submit as the ultimate proof of my geekiness, I'd watched Arnold Schwarzenegger's first motion picture Hercules in New York at least ten times before my sixteenth birthday. (That's probably just proof of my dismal standards.)

I'm no filmmaker, but I'm as enamored with the process of filmmaking as anyone. Which is why Be Kind Rewind, in which two video store clerks set out to film their own cobbled-together versions of classic movies after the real tapes get erased, holds such hilarious, romantic potential.

Back to Michel Gondry. He spoke for about 90 minutes about, among other things:

The place of improvisation in filmmaking: "It's the job of the actors to be in the moment, and the job of the director to be around the moment."
The importance of being flexible: "Sometimes the unscripted moments in filming are funnier than the things you planned for."
Sequels: "This new movie is a reaction to the fact that sequels nowadays cost more to make than the original."
Childhood creative outlets: "My parents really encouraged me."

Gondry also showed short clips from the new film, and also this Björk video he directed late last year ("Declare Independence"), a stunning piece of video art depicting a stunning bit of performance art inspired by a stunning song:

Web vs M.D.

2008-01-10T23:29:00.000-05:00

As a young-ish adult, I take many things for granted: my ample head of hair, my ability to troubleshoot computer problems without calling a 1-800 number, and Sam Waterston returning for yet another season on Law & Order. One day, my hair will be gone, computers will be incomprehensible quantum machines, and Sam Waterston will be playing a 110-year-old district attorney on Law & Order. The one thing I shouldn't be taking for granted any more is my health, and this was never made clearer to me than a year ago, when I began treatment for a chronic pain problem.

Before last year, I hadn't seen a real doctor in about eight years. Once, in college, I went to the campus health center to get some prescriptions for a nasty case of the flu. The medical professional who treated me was the sweetest lady ever; she explained everything she did before she did it, smiled brightly the whole time, and gave me a printout from a web site that listed all the things I should be doing to feel better. "You're the nicest doctor I've ever had," I told her as I was leaving. "That's because I'm not a doctor," she said. "I'm a nurse-practitioner."

I had to go home and Google that one.

How seriously should you take your doctor's advice versus the advice you find on a web site? When my condition developed last year, the first thing I did was to do some research online. After several hours of reading and cross-referencing various web sites, I concluded that I had a pinched nerve. This shallow self-diagnosis informed all my interactions with actual doctors later. I told my general practitioner that I thought I had a pinched nerve. He referred me to a neurologist who then sent me to get a battery of tests over several months. The neurologist concluded that I did indeed have a pinched nerve, and the solution would be to undergo physical therapy for three months.

But a funny thing happened when I went for my first therapy session. My physical therapist, who asked me a few simple questions and made me do some stretches, determined within minutes that I didn't have a pinched nerve after all -- I had, in fact, a condition called bursitis. I'd heard of bursitis before, in professional sports injury reports in the news, but it had never occurred to me that I might have it. But the more research I did, the more I think my physical therapist is right.

Sometimes doctors are right, and sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes, the Internet can help, and sometimes, it can't. I wish I knew the lesson here, but I don't. For every doctor who thinks it's a bad idea for a patient to use the Internet as medical resource, there's another who disagrees.

Point: When the Patient is a Googler [Time Magazine]
Counterpoint: Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? [Salon]

Knicks at night

2008-01-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

My friend Tyler and I went to the Knicks game a Madison Square Garden tonight. We've been to three Knicks games in the last twelve months or so, and the Knicks lost all three games. I said it the other day, so you already know: it hasn't been good for New York sports fans of late.

Still, watching the game was enjoyable, aside from having to tolerate the boorishly loud trio of Cantonese-speaking spectators sitting immediately behind us, and the home team, you know, losing the game. The visiting team was the Houston Rockets, notable for employing the greatest Chinese basketball player in the world, Yao Ming. Yao is also currently the NBA's tallest player, which is sort of like being the smartest student at Harvard. Some of his dunks were so impressive that even Knicks fans cheered despite themselves.

Oh yeah, and a number of celebs were in the crowd, including Zhang Ziyi, Ron Howard (who smiled amiably as the Happy Days theme song played over the arena speakers) and New York Giants running back Brandon Jacobs.

Thirty. Something.

2008-01-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

Today was my 30th birthday. My friends and family asked me if I did anything special today. Below is a list of what I did; you can decide if anything is particularly special.

Woke up, watered the orchid, fed the cat, took a shower, put on blue jeans and my third-favorite t-shirt and a pair of Converse All-Stars.
Walked to the office.
Left my cellphone at my desk. Went to the kitchen.
Got a bowl of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes with 99%-fat-free milk.
Returned to my desk and discovered that I'd missed three phone calls.
Sat and worked for exactly three hours straight. Was briefly interrupted by a phone call from CT, one of my best friends from high school, calling to wish me a happy birthday. I wished that I could have spent a whole hour talking, but I couldn't due to impending deadline.
Went to lunch with co-workers. One of them bought me a sandwich and a chocolate cookie at 'Wichcraft.
Drank a bottle of Sprite.
Had a conversation with co-workers about banana split sundaes, gay shoe salesmen, and American Gladiators.
Attended a meeting.
Worked until 6:45 PM.
Took the F train to 14th Street. Met Sarah. Got on the PATH train toward New Jersey.
Met some church friends at their home in Jersey City.
Ate pizza and boneless buffalo wings from Domino's.
Had a discussion about the intersection of work and faith in light of the redemptive nature of the death and resurrection of Jesus, among other light topics of conversation.
Was surprised by sneaky appearance of three-candled birthday cake.
Ate cake.
Took the PATH train back to New York. Got out of the PATH station and decided to walk home instead of taking the subway. Saw about nine people walking dogs along the way. Noticed that there is a record store in the West Village called Bleecker Bob's Records. Made mental note to check it out some time this week.
Got back home.
Read and responded to e-mails. Overheard music by The National on the television. Made mental note to buy their new album, Boxer.
Petted and fed cat.
Took out trash.
Wrote this blog post.

Free ride?

2008-01-07T23:28:00.000-05:00

If, one day in the near future, all the subways and buses in New York City were free of charge, it will likely be because of a 93-year-old man named Ted Kheel. His proposal is simple: charge motorists between $16 and $32 in tolls for entering Manhattan's central business district. It's outrageous, but ostensibly realistic -- I'm excited at the prospect and hopeful for the future of Kheel's proposal, which is part of a study conducted by the Nuture New York's Nature Foundation. Imagine never having to worry about buying a Metrocard; you could just walk down a subway entrance and step onto a train!

Click to read:
Gothamist interviews Ted Kheel.
Kheel's proposal to eliminate subway and bus fares.
Nuture New York's Nature site.

Bamn for your buck

2008-01-06T23:31:00.000-05:00

A week ago, we took a walk on St Mark's Place. I was on a quest to find a Lightning Bolt album (and figured erroneously that at least one obscure East Village record store would have it in stock). Shopping fruitlessly, I'm sure you'll agree, is tiring and hunger-inducing, and since we were meeting friends for dinner in a couple of hours, I needed something cheap and small and savory to tide me over.

That's how we ended up at Bamn!, an automat the likes of which haven't been seen in New York for fifteen years. You get loose change from a machine, then exchange it for all kinds of fast food at another machine. I passed up the two-dollar cheeseburger and went for chicken fingers (also two dollars, for two average-sized pieces of breaded fried chicken meat, plus honey mustard sauce). They were pretty good. This made me think about what other kinds of food you can get for about two dollars in New York. Here's a short list:

Cup of Dannon yogurt and two bananas from a deli. Junior bacon cheeseburger and small fries at Wendy's. Hotdog with sauerkraut from a street vendor. Slice of cheese pizza (no toppings) from the corner pizza joint. Empanada from a local cafe. Tall coffee from Starbucks. Here's hoping that, someday, the price of a slice of New York cheesecake will fall back down to $2.00.

Fumbles

2008-01-05T10:36:00.000-05:00

Glaringly obvious comment ahead: 2007 was a bad year for New York sports. The Knicks lost 15 of their last 19 games to end the regular season last season. Playoffs? Not even close. Two months into this season, they've won eight games. Eight out of 31. The Giants have more wins than that in 16 games.

Speaking of the Giants, they squeaked their way into tomorrow's AFC wild card game. I say squeak because there was a point in the regular season that New York fans began worrying their team wouldn't make the playoffs. Now that they're in, they have to contend with Jeff Garcia, an arch-nemesis if there ever was one.

In Major League Soccer (which, by international standards, is sort of like the soccer you play with your cousins on 4th of July weekend while waiting for the cheese to melt on the burgers), New York's Red Bulls were dismissed by the New England Revolution. (If this blog were titled One Year in Boston, there'd be plenty of good news in sports, by the way.)

I'd mention something about baseball, but it's too early in the day for rage and depression.

And what about my beloved Rutgers, the closest thing to New York's official college football team? They finished the '07 season with a 7-5 record, good enough to be invited to a bowl game so inconsequential that it's being played in Canada.

No white

2008-01-04T20:52:00.000-05:00

I'm unhappy to report that it hasn't snowed much this winter, though it usually doesn't in this part of the country until late January and February anyway. I didn't grow up in a snowy climate (unless you count the dandruff I had in 9th grade), and I still remember the first time I ever saw snow fall from the sky: on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, in November 1996, my first winter in America. Snow still holds a degree of romantic allure for me, even though it usually piles up in muddy slush heaps after a couple of days, and is apt to cause car accidents and slip injuries. Here, in anticipation of New York's first big snowfall (whenever that may be), are my five favorite things to do when it snows:

5. Go jogging. I kid you not. I love running in the snow, because every footfall sounds soft, like running in a cloud.
4. Sledding. I've been skiing (downhill and cross-country), and I once ice-skated on a frozen lake with a girl I really liked, but sledding is better because it's simple and fun. You don't need any special equipment, either; in college, my friends would smuggle dinner trays out of the dining hall for sledding.
3. Play a team sport. The other day, our soccer league canceled our games because snow and sleet were expected in the region. That doesn't make any sense. Soccer and football are even better in the snow.
2. Be indoors. Counter-intuitive, but fun. The best is when you wake up on a Saturday or holiday, look out your window, and see the world being nestled in beds of white powder. Then you make yourself a mug of hot chocolate, drink it, then go back to sleep. But the single greatest thing to do in the snow is...
1. Snowball fight. With as many friends as possible.

Breaking resolutions

2008-01-03T22:29:00.000-05:00

Have you seen Super Size Me? Did it make you hungry for McDonald's? I've met several people who found themselves craving a cheeseburger and fries even after watching filmmaker Morgan Spurlock throw up his double-quarter-pounder. Not me; I stayed away from the golden arches for an entire year after watching only the trailer for the film.

I did get around to watching the whole documentary a couple of years ago, and since then, I've had McDonald's about six or seven times. That's about one Big Mac meal every four months. Long gone are the days when I'd eat two Burger King Whoppers a day, twice a week (also known as "the foolhardy college years").

New York has made me pretty conscious about what I consume, which is why I sympathize well with Gothamist's Food Resolutions for the new year. Except for one: "Eat less cheese." I may as well "breathe less air" or "be less devastatingly handsome" or "reduce sarcasm." Impossible! So to kick off 2008, I now reveal my very favorite cheese in the entire world: roomano. And I resolve to eat it much more frequently than every four months.

One embarrassment at a time

2008-01-02T23:21:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I ran out to buy toilet paper. The Duane Reade on Broadway was closed (what with it being New Year's Day and all), so I went to the deli around the corner. I bought a four-pack of Cottonelle rolls (the one with the puppy on the wrapping, because nothing makes me think of toilet paper like a yellow labrador retriever).

Sarah and I hate plastic bags. They clog waterways, cause illness in sea turtles, and take a thousand years to degrade in landfills. So when I paid for my toilet paper, I declined the plastic bag and just picked up the rolls and walked out. And yes, it did seem sort of weird to walk down a Manhattan street carrying nothing but toilet paper. It must have seemed weird to the group of people who walked past, because some of them laughed and I know they were laughing at me because I heard one of them say something something toilet paper something.

But... my temporary -- and probably unwarranted -- embarrassment was a small price to pay. For there will now be one less sea turtle with gastrointestinal distress out there.

Beginning at the beginning

2008-01-01T22:38:00.001-05:00

Happy new year. I wish I could say that we did something uniquely New York-ish for the New Year's Eve countdown -- like watching a ball drop while trying to keep warm by rubbing up against a million other people -- but I can't. We stayed home and briefly watched Dick Clark on TV; the guy always seems to have a more rockin' eve than we do anyway. I made mango juice sodas and we toasted the new year. Then I went back to watching the Futurama marathon on Cartoon Network. Because lines like "I am the man with no name: Zapp Brannigan!" are way better than watching Miley Cyrus sing.

In the black

2007-11-23T13:34:00.000-05:00

Today is Black Friday, but it is also Buy Nothing Day, an initiative against any shopping whatsoever. In years past, I didn't really spend any money on Black Friday, and I felt sort of proud of that, even if I wasn't intentionally aligning myself with the more proactive supporters of the shopping moratorium.

This year, however, Guitar Center, that (un)friendly neighborhood behemoth of a musical instrument retail store, did me in. Those calculating fiends! They sent me a 20%-off-any-one-item coupon in the mail, as if knowing that I'd been eying that new Electro Harmonix stompbox. Plus, they made the coupon valid for two hours only, between 8:00 and 10:00 this very morning.

So I woke at 9:00, rushed out to Guitar Center on 14th Street, and bought. I bought! For the first time in years, I bought something on Black Friday. And you know what? I can now make my guitar sound like an organ. Some things are worth getting up at nine on a holiday.

So long, and thanks for all the turkey

2007-11-22T22:27:00.000-05:00

Today is Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday that, to the outsider, appears to celebrate the deliciousness of turkey. In reality, it celebrates gluttony, the four-day weekend, and pre-Christmas shopping. Or something like that.

In keeping with recent tradition, we hightailed it to central New Jersey to have a Thanksgiving meal with Sarah's family. This year, due to my new interest in football, I actually enjoyed watching the Thanksgiving Day football game on Fox, in which the Green Bay Packers beat the Detroit Lions. Brett Favre was not the first football player I'd heard of while growing up in Malaysia (a gentler land where "football" means soccer and American football is about as popular as getting punched in the face). But Brett Favre and the Packers won the Superbowl the year I came to the United States, so his name is, to me, synonymous with Americana. Favre is 38 years old now. He's still the starting quarterback for the Packers. It's actually sort of amazing.

Here's the other thing about Thanksgiving: it's the day before Black Friday, ostensibly the biggest shopping day of the year. Today, apart from the areas surrounding the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Manhattan was a ghost town, the calm before the storm. Tomorrow, I expect pandemonium.

Goals, or lack thereof

2007-11-18T23:49:00.000-05:00

Today I played my first football (soccer) game in a long time. In fact, today was the first time I did any sort of significant exercise in a long time. I know I wrote a few days ago that I was going to begin running, but in reality, my first run was immediately prior to the soccer game -- I would have been late to the game, so I ran nine blocks through Chinatown to get to the park.

The game was a blowout, and not in our favor. I was reduced to a stumbling, panting mess, which sort of meant that my team (comprised of my co-workers) was playing one man down. Granted, our opponents were large and skilled. Okay, they weren't that large, but they were swift and adroit with the ball. Still, a part of me is refusing to make that an excuse. The fact is that I'm dreadfully out of shape, and I need to do something about it.

So, my first goal is to be able to jog twenty minutes straight without having that, you know, dying feeling. I realize twenty minutes is hardly worth cheering, but I'm taking small steps here. Besides, having run frequently in high school, I realize that the leap from twenty minutes to, say, forty minutes is exponential. That was true when I was 16, at least.

And my second goal is to avoid being an embarrassment to my co-workers on the field. This, I suspect, will be harder to accomplish.

The running man

2007-11-15T20:18:00.001-05:00

For the first time since high school, I'm seriously and soberly attempting to engage in some form of consistent exercise. You have to be motivated to find proper places to exercise in the middle of Manhattan, and joining a gym is an extravagance for me at this point. So I've done two things: I bought a proper pair of running shoes and will begin running outdoors, and I joined my office's league soccer team.

I've been living in sloth for the last few years; my only exercise used to consist of walking to and from work, and walking up and down the four flights of stairs in my apartment building. I don't have any serious health problems, but I did have to see a doctor earlier this year for a condition at least partially caused by lack of mobility and circulation.

So what's it like to run in NYC? Um, I'll write about it when I actually get around to it, but I will say this: New York is a runner's city (Runner's World magazine apparently rated it the third best American city for running, according to this site). This year's New York City Marathon was run merely eleven days ago, and yet I still see runners tearing up the sidewalk at all times of the day, and in all kinds of weather. The fools. The healthy fools.

Smell thy neighbor

2007-11-14T19:01:00.000-05:00

I lived in an apartment building for the first three years of my life (back in Malaysia, where apartments are better known as flats). Then my parents bought a house, and suddenly we had a front yard where my brother and I could play with the garden hose on a hot afternoon, and a backyard where we grew mangoes and limes and four-angled beans. I lived in that house until I went to college.

Now, I live in an apartment again -- one about 12,000 miles away from where I grew up. And I wish I could remember what it was like to live in an apartment in Malaysia. Here's what it's like living in an apartment building in New York:

I never speak to my neighbors. In fact, I barely ever see my neighbors. New Yorkers are intensely private people, especially the twenty-something single ones, and getting to know your neighbor is pointless and inconvenient for the most part. There are some exceptions; I hear stories of summer cookouts on the roof of some apartments, and the whole building is invited. But for the most part, apartment living in NYC is characterized by isolation, punctuated by polite nods and hasty hello's as neighbors pass each other on the stairs.

The funny thing about living in an apartment is this: there are some things you just can't hide from people. My neighbors can conceal their faces, but they can't hide their odors. Since I live on the top floor of an elevator-less building, I have to walk past every door of every apartment. I made mental notes on my way up from work today. This is what each floor smells like:

1st Floor - hint of bleach, but very slight
2nd Floor - rotten cabbage
3rd Floor - something medicinal, like Chinese herbal tea
4th Floor - cooked carrots
5th Floor (my floor) - almost odorless

I could make this an ongoing series and report these odors daily, but the truth is the fourth floor always smells like cooked carrots.

Playing catch-up

2007-11-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Whaddaya know -- it's been three months since I started this blog, so I'm already a quarter of the way through my final year in New York City. Since I haven't written in a while (due to a confluence of factors as varied as cold weather, professional sports, and long work hours), here's a rundown of what's been happening in the last two weeks, starting with the most recent.

Friday, November 2: It's amazing how you can ignore certain things that are right under your nose. There's a restaurant just down the street from our apartment called The Kitchen Club, a cozy-looking corner joint that always looked a little too old and stuffy for our liking. But Sarah (who I'll begin to referring to as Sarah the Wife, unless she tells me not to) went there a couple of weeks ago and loved it! So we went back this Friday and everything was delicious, especially the duck-and-ginger dumpling appetizer. Unlike virtually every restaurant I've been to, the food at the Kitchen Club is under-seasoned, which delighted me to no end. One of my pet peeves is over-salted food, which I complained about in my entry on Babbo.

Tuesday and Wednesday, October 30-31: Halloween in New York is wild. For example, on my way to work on Wednesday, I walked by a woman dressed as a squid, talking nonchalantly to her friend, who was dressed in plainclothes. By then, I'd sort of had enough with Halloween, because the night before, the company had our annual Halloween Party, which, among other things, is an excuse to get drunk on a weeknight and then partake in what is simultaneously the best and the worst cultural activity in modern society: karaoke. But before things devolved so, I and four co-workers had to judge the group costume contest. Let's just say that the winning team beat out all others by sheer audacity and humor, in an NC-17 kind of way.

Thursday, October 25: I attended Black Ball 2007, a fundraising event held annually to honor people who've done significant work to battle AIDS and its effects in Africa. The only reason I got to go was because Anomaly does pro bono design and promotional work for Keep A Child Alive, the organizer of the event. I was not, unfortunately, one of the select few offered a seat at the $10,000-a-plate table, eating Korean spare-ribs just a few feet away from the likes of Bono, Gwen Stefani and Jay-Z. Most of us from the company were banished to the upstairs cocktail area, where we watched Alicia Keys duet with Sheryl Crow on stage, and reduced the open bar to their last bottle of vodka. But the real thrill was listening to Bono's speech, during which he imagined a world where a person's survival isn't dependent on where he is born. After five minutes listening to the guy, I understood his ability to sway rulers and rockers, policy-makers and proletariat: there is no discernible pretense in him.

Postscript: On the same night I was serenaded by Alicia Keys, Sarah the Wife bumped into celebrity chef Bobby Flay at a book signing, which explains why I now have a signed copy of Mesa Grill Cookbook. This was one ridiculous night.

Thursday, October 25: I had a long conversation with a cab driver. For the duration of my trip, which was between Madison Square Garden and my apartment at the corner of Mott and Houston, his meter refused to work, a consequence of those newfangled GPS systems that cabbies are now required to install. The broken meter was of no concern to me -- I'm well familiar with the route and his estimation of the fare was exactly what I'd had in mind. We chatted about the cabbie strike, and then about where he was from (El Salvador) and whether or not it was still lucrative to drive a cab in New York (it is decidedly not, due to higher maintenance and gas prices and stagnant ridership). He was the second cabbie I'd spoken to in two weeks who was seriously thinking about leaving New York and returning to his native country, which made me sort of sad. I tipped him extra.

Power Hauer

2007-10-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I saw one of the best movies I've ever seen in a theater. And it's a 25-year-old film. Sure, the film's artistic merits (great direction, bristling performances by stars Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, a genre-bending screenplay) had much to do with how joyful the experience of watching Blade Runner: The Final Cut was for me. But that sparkling new print! That remastered soundtrack! Those new shots and effects! It also helped that the film was shown at the Ziegfeld, a gracefully aging movie palace in midtown Manhattan with a fantastic digital projector.

This was also the first time in years I've seen a movie in a theater all by my lonesome. Perhaps this was for the best -- more time to myself, to savor every stunning frame, and to realize that Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty is one of the great screen villains of all time. I've seen multiple versions of the film, on both VHS and DVD, and only ever on a TV screen, but this was like watching it for the first time.

Following Britney Spears

2007-10-17T23:26:00.000-04:00

How do you know you're in Hollywood? When you're looking for a parking space outside an apartment building at 2:00 in the morning on Friday, and you have to gently swerve to avoid giggly blond girls spilling out of their cars (and their dresses). Wait a minute, you say. How is that different from New York? Well, in New York, all the cars are cabs, and no one drives except cabbies.

As with New York, I arrived in Los Angeles with a list of things to do, places to go, and food to eat, all of which we will get to in the next few posts. The morning after we arrived, for example, I checked "drive on Mulholland Drive" off my to-do list. Also, I checked "drive past the the parking lot on Ventura Boulevard where Britney Spears drove into a car and left the scene on August 6 2007" off my other list. This other list is called "Things I did unintentionally." Obviously, there is a major sub-section of this list that involves celebrities, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot escape the stifling awareness of celebrity in Los Angeles.

I use the word "celebrity" in the loosest terms, of course.

Coming up... the blondest state.

Leaving on a jet plane

2007-10-10T21:50:00.000-04:00

Today I'm kicking off a short series of blog entries about my trip to the great state of California. Yes, I know this is a New York City blog, which is why I'm calling this series "Finding New York in California."

The thing you have to understand about leaving NYC on an airplane is that New York's most prominent airport, John F. Kennedy International, is one of the worst international airports in the world. The reasons are numerous: misleading signage, unreliable and expensive methods of transport to and from the airport, dilapidated facilities at certain terminals, and unattractive architecture. On top of that, the unpredictable weather patterns over the region frequently cause flight delays, as it did on the evening we boarded our Virgin America flight bound for Los Angeles. We were supposed to take off at 7:35 PM -- it was closer to 10:30 PM by the time our Airbus A320 finally left the ground.

The only consolation was that Virgin America has live TV channels at every seat. However, this convenience taught me an important lesson: When flying on an airline that does not provide free meals, do not watch the Food Network. Not even for a moment.

Coming up... how to tell you've arrived in Hollywood.

Things I saw in 20 minutes

2007-09-27T10:54:00.000-04:00

I went to Freemans Sporting Club, the barber shop I wrote about in this post, to get a haircut this morning, but they don't open until 12:00 noon. So I came back home. It was an interesting trip nonetheless. Here were some things I saw in the 20 minutes it took for me to go there and back.

"Snowman Seeks Skibunny" -- graffiti on wall, Rivington Street

"Angry Fembot Army" -- graffiti on door frame of private home, Freeman Alley

"Fascism Sucks" -- slogan on t-shirt worn by a middle-aged man sitting outside the Salvation Army building

As I walked by a construction site at the corner of Elizabeth and Prince Streets, just two blocks from home, a construction worker sweeping the sidewalk flagged me down and asked if this area was called SoHo. He wore an orange hardhat and had no front teeth. I told him that it was closer to Little Italy than SoHo, and that SoHo was on the other side of Broadway.

"So if I was to tell people where I work, what would I say?"

"Well," I said, "you could say NoLIta. It stands for North of Little Italy."

He didn't like the word "NoLIta" (probably because he didn't know the name and neither might anyone else he'd care to tell) and instead asked if he was anywhere near the Lower East Side. I told him that, in fact, the Lower East Side was a merely one block away, on the other side of Bowery.

"Ah, okay," he said. "Cos I'm like, where the hell am I?!"

We laughed at the absurdity of his predicament. I imagine he's going to go home tonight, and his wife will ask, "So, honey, where did the company assign you today?" And he's going to say, "Well, it wasn't Little Italy, and it wasn't SoHo, and it wasn't the Lower East Side, and some dude told me it was a 'hood called Noriega or Normandy or somethin' like it." And then his wife's eyes will narrow, and she will say, "You weren't at work today at all, were you? You were out drinkin' with your cousin Leroy! Remember what happened the last time you drank before 5:00 PM? Remember how you lost them front teeth?"

Short notes

2007-09-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

I've been a little negligent with the blog over the last few days, though not for lack of things to write about. I'm not feeling particularly healthy -- when I get sick, it's usually a combination of exhaustion, lack of sleep, irregular eating, and not keeping warm at night. Currently, my symptoms are very mild: a heaviness in my head, an itch in my throat, a barely discernible fever. It's been enough, however, to lower my spirits and put me off blogging temporarily. But here I am again.
---
Last weekend, I ate at the Red Hook Ball Fields. According to the New York Times, "there is no better street-food scene in all of New York," a statement I am unfit to confirm since I don't eat a lot of street food. But it sure beats the San Gennaro festival. I'll post pictures and more about the food later.
---
Sarah and I will be heading out to sunny Los Angeles, California, in a few days. The last vacation I took was 14 months ago, so I'm overdue. We'll be attending a wedding (at which Sarah is a bridesmaid and I will be playing guitar with the groom during the ceremony), after which I'll be staying another whole week while Sarah jets over to Milan, Italy, for work. It'll be a good opportunity for me to rest and relax, but an overwhelming urge to go on a food tour of the Los Angeles area has gripped me of late, so this perennially skinny boy may return to the east coast with some excess baggage, if you know what I mean.

I love L.A. One thing I'd like to do is blog about the differences between Los Angeles and New York, two iconic American cities on opposite coasts. Last summer, when drivers rolled their windows down and turned up their speakers on the streets of Manhattan, they played Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy," a fitting anthem for the neurotic New Yorker. In Los Angeles, drivers blasted... Coldplay. That's right, Coldplay -- the band whose songs "wallowed happily in their unhappiness," to quote Jon Pareles of the New York Times (he also called them "the most insufferable band of the decade.") That's how persistently nice the weather in the Golden State is: you have to play depressing music to offset the sunshine.
---
At the end of this week, I'll be roughly one-sixth of the way through my final year as a New York resident. Highlights have been the free Battles gig at the Seaport Music Festival, attending the NYC premiere of Rocket Science, walking through Richard Serra's immense steel sculptures at MoMA, and our anniversary dinner at Babbo.

My favorite New York website

2007-09-19T23:58:00.001-04:00

To get a feel of what it's like to live in New York, I'd say the best thing to do short of actually moving here would be to read Gothamist, the best New York City blog out there. Never crass, jaded or sensationalistic (characteristics that too often define other NYC blogs) Gothamist is fun and informative enough to read multiple times a day, since it covers events, weather, sports, business, and politics. Yet somehow, it's got this small-town newspaper feel to it, too. For example, recent posts have included a recipe for cherry almond chocolate chip cookies, and a news story about a cow on the loose in the streets of Queens. Hey, if Bessie's tearing up the sidewalk on my street, I'd want to know.

Click here to read Gothamist.

Molto buono: a dinner at Babbo

2007-09-18T23:31:00.000-04:00

On September 18th, 2004, Sarah and I were married. To celebrate our third anniversary tonight -- and fulfill a long-time culinary goal -- we dined at Babbo, Mario Batali's first New York restaurant and one of Gourmet Magazine's 50 Best Restaurants in America. I know I insisted in this post two weeks ago that we don't often eat at places run by celebrity chefs, yet there we were tonight, feasting on Batali's outrageously delicious Italian dishes: a three-minute egg broken over warm lamb's tongue; marinated sardines with caramelized fennel and lobster oil; gnocchi in a veritable stew of oxtail and tomatoes; lamb chops and mint leaves nestled on a summery lemon yogurt sauce.

We can't keep this up for much longer, for both the expanding waistline of doom and the incredible shrinking bank account will soon stretch us to uncomfortable limits. But it's impossible to think of eventualities when, in the immediacy of celebration and the breaking of bread that accompanies it, you partake in all the riches of God's creation artfully arranged on a ceramic dish. I'm not saying we had a religious experience at Babbo -- a few things detracted from the otherwise excellent meal, including slow service and some over-seasoning. But, man, oh man, food like that makes you believe you can do anything. Like eat lamb's tongue.

Michigan rising

2007-09-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Finally, I see New Yorkers wearing University of Michigan apparel again. When Michigan, a perennial championship contender, went 0-2 to begin the college football season, including a stultifying loss to Division I-AA school Appalachian State, there was nary a maize-and-blue t-shirt in sight. Then, last Saturday, the Wolverines shut out Notre Dame for the season's first win. On Sunday, I saw a guy on the subway wearing a Michigan sweatshirt. And today, on my way to work, I rode the elevator with a gentleman wearing a button-down shirt, necktie, and a Michigan cap on his head.

Shopaholics wanted

2007-09-17T22:25:00.000-04:00

I found this sign taped to the front door of our building this evening:

Attention Residents:
Disney Pictures and Bruckheimer Productions are going to be filming a new movie this fall entitled, "Confessions of a Shopaholic". As research for this film, we are looking for apartments belonging to women between the ages of 21 and 28. We would like to take pictures of the apartment for our art department so that they can get a sense of how to design the main character's apartment. This is NOT for filming. If you fall into this category and are interested, please contact Malaika Johnson at 347.528.6709.
Malaika Johnson
Locations Department

We get signs like this one all the time. And film crews set up lighting and filming equipment on our street, on average, about once every two months. Since Sarah is outside the specified age range, we certainly won't be calling Ms. Johnson. But Sarah is likely to be in the target audience for this movie, which, I'm guessing, is likely based on Sophie Kinsella's book of the same title. It may end up being a fluffy chick flick, but at least you'll know the main character's apartment will be based on a real home in one of the best shopping districts in the city.

Winners and losers

2007-09-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

My mother in-law, echoing a popular and accurate sentiment, often says, "New York loves a winner." This is especially true for the city's professional sports teams. Now, I'm no sports pundit, and the only pro sport I follow with any true conviction is basketball. Unfortunately for me, the New York Knicks, once an NBA powerhouse, has in recent years been about as exciting to watch as my cat's attempt to remove an ice cube from her water bowl. I did attend a couple of games last season at the famed Madison Square Garden, both times using free tickets, both times leaving disappointed as the home team sort of gave up altogether. I've never really been a fan of the Knicks, though, so it's hardly a personal loss.

For more successful sports organizations, there are always the Mets and the Yankees, New York's major league baseball teams. Confession: Having been born and raised in another country, I only recently figured out the game of baseball. Until about two or three months ago, I didn't know what RBI stood for. Until tonight, I didn't know what ERA stood for.* And I'm still learning. I don't know for sure if an understanding of various acronyms and statistical categories is essential to enjoying the "American pastime," but it sure does enhance the enjoyment for me. Tonight, as I watched the Yankees hold off perennial rivals the Boston Red Sox in the ninth inning to win the game by a precarious margin, it occurred to me that I might be in danger of becoming a fan.

It's not hard to be a fan of the Yankees -- they're the most successful North American professional sports franchise in history, winning 26 World Series championships (by comparison, the Boston Celtics, the most successful pro basketball franchise, have a paltry 16 NBA titles). Fairweather fans are a dime a dozen in this city, but still, you have to appreciate the support from the New York area for the phenomenal success of the Rutgers college football** team, who last year finished the season with a 10-2 record, the best in the school's history. Not too long ago, they were lucky to win two games in one season. When I was at Rutgers, several years ago, I never ever went to a game. In fact, when I was at Rutgers, I didn't even know how the game of football is played.

Rutgers is 40 miles outside of the city, but it's the closest you can get to a winning local college football team in a city that desperately wants a college football team to root for. I was on the train today heading back into New York from New Jersey, and in between standard announcements ("ThisstationstopisMetroparkpleasewatchyourstepasyouexitthetrain"), the driver came on the PA system to announce that "Green Bay is beatin' up on the Giants." Then he reported that "Rutgers is number nine in the country," meaning that the Rutgers football team was now the ninth-best*** college team in the nation, according to the AP Poll. In spite of myself, I let out a celebratory "whoo-hoo!" and the teenaged boy in a Nike baseball cap sitting next to me flinched and gave a me furtive glance, as if worried that I might behead him with my cellphone.

*Yes, I know I could have looked up these things online, or asked one of the many sports nuts I know, but it's been far more rewarding learning the game as I watch it on TV.
**By "football" I mean gridiron, or American, football. Not to be confused with "soccer" which, while indeed a beautiful game and one I grew up playing, is merely the second-greatest game in the world.
***Rutgers is actually ranked 11th. Apparently the train operator's information was as reliable as New Jersey Transit's schedules.

Sowing and reaping in Brooklyn

2007-09-16T16:46:00.000-04:00

I first read about Manny Howard, the Brooklyn man who grew a farm in his backyard as his sole source of sustenance, in last week's New York Magazine cover story. But with the likes of Reuters covering his harrowing and only somewhat rewarding endeavor, it looks like the appeal of the story is universal. Make sure you have plenty of time, then read the story here: My Empire of Dirt [NYMag.com]

Italian ice and everything nice

2007-09-14T23:57:00.000-04:00

For the next two weeks, Little Italy plays host to the annual Feast of San Gennaro street fair. The San Gennaro festival was once a religious commemoration, but is now closer to a cultural celebration marked by commercialism, entertainment and excess. Not unlike Christmas, come to think of it.

Since the festival occurs around the middle of September every year -- along the length of Mulberry Street just a block away from our apartment -- it's impossible for Sarah and me to avoid, or avoid thinking about. You see, our wedding anniversary falls smack in the middle of the festival. And so we get wistful when we see the tre colori flags being strung up by those ugly wheeled cranes, when dirty blue sawhorses are erected as traffic barriers, when loudmouthed construction workers assemble wooden stalls for rigged carnival games.

Okay, so it's hardly a romantic event. It's a noisy, crowded, sticky tourist trap, but it's enjoyable in small doses. Tonight, we walked through the street fair with our good friend Melissa, in search of the artery-clogging, tooth-melting deep-fried Twinkie, among other culinary delights. I don't know what the international reach of the Twinkie is, but if you (like many readers of this blog) live outside the United States and have never had a Twinkie, let me put it as delicately as I can: Eating a Twinkie is like swimming in the East River -- you should only do it once a year at most, because once is enough to make you sort of sick. And if possible, try to avoid doing it altogether, because the risk of death needlessly increases every time you do it.

Of course, like swimming in testy waters, eating a Twinkie can be sort of fun. Especially when it's coated in batter, deep-fried, and dusted dangerously with powdered sugar. We found one vendor who indeed sold such a monstrosity, for $3 each. On Melissa's insistence, I talked the seller into selling us two for $5. He not only agreed, but also gave us three free zeppoles, which are basically deep-fried nuggets of dough almost the size of tennis balls. They were also dusted with powdered sugar. We ate everything.

This happened after we'd eaten a whole dinner's worth of barbecued pork, sausage-and-peppers sandwiches, and curly french fries, but before the cherry and coconut Italian ices.

Two observations while walking through Little Italy among hundreds and hundreds of Italian Americans: First, Italian women are quite breathtaking.

I don't remember my second observation.

Read more about the Feast of San Gennaro here. Read more than you need to know about Twinkies here. [Wikipedia]

Savvy at Savoy

2007-09-13T22:38:00.000-04:00

Tonight, on a whim, we had dinner at Savoy. I'm not going to review the restaurant per se, for that would be redundant. Savoy has been a SoHo mainstay since the mid-90s, and although it was our first time there, it looked like each of our fellow diners was well familiar with the place. I will say that we had a very enjoyable meal of grilled lamb and slow-roasted sockeye salmon, and by skipping appetizers and wine and by sharing one dessert, we avoided breaking the bank as well. That one dessert, by the way, was killer: white chocolate bread pudding with berry sorbet. Phenomenal.

I requested a table in the upstairs dining room, which I knew of by reputation. It turned out to be an intimate space, furnished in a comfortable, rustic way.

We found out that on October 9, Savoy will be hosting something called Nose to Tail Dining, with an English chef named Fergus Henderson. More than likely, the dinner service will make use of every part of an animal, according to Henderson's philosophy and practice of using oft-discarded cuts of meat in cooking. This made me think of The Far Side, a comic strip by Gary Larson that once illustrated the point. In the strip, a group of cavemen are systematically tearing apart the carcass of a woolly mammoth and carrying the pieces off, except for the tail, which lies severed on the ground. A crotchety old grandfather caveman standing nearby points indignantly at the tail and yells, "In my day, we used every goldang part of the mammoth!"

No forwarding address

2007-09-12T22:11:00.000-04:00

For a New York resident, here's a not-so-surprising statistic: Only a third of New York City homes are owner-occupied, compared to two-thirds in the rest of the nation, says the Census Bureau. That means that, like Sarah and me, most New Yorkers rent the homes they're currently living in.

We've lived in our apartment for three years, but many people I know have lived in theirs much less longer. I find one particular side effect of this urban nomadism in our mailbox every day: We frequently receive mail addressed not to us, but to the previous resident of the apartment. Today, for example, a postcard came for Amy D. from Joseph S. Tanen, Violinmaker. The postcard invites Amy to visit the soon-to-be-opened Tanen shop at 3111 Broadway, next to the Manhattan School of Music.

So at some point in the past, our apartment was occupied by a violinist named Amy. Did she practice on her instrument here in this very room where I'm typing this? Was she an amateur who simply annoyed the neighbors? Is she responsible for our broken doorbell, the one that has never worked since we moved in? Or maybe she made the hole in our screen window -- the one that lets in flies and bees in the summer -- with an overly enthusiastic stroke of her bow. Only Amy knows.

When we move out of the apartment next July, someone else is going to move in and start receiving our mail. Not the bills and the letters of correspondence and the magazines, of course; we'll make sure we leave a forwarding address for those. But perhaps the catalogs from Musician's Friend. And Guitar Center. And Music123, Zzounds, Sam Ash Music, and Disc Makers.

What will these people assume about me? Only they'll know.

The 11th day of September

2007-09-11T22:00:00.000-04:00

There's nothing different about today, on the surface. Once again, I had to stay late at work, making tonight's dinner the second one I've eaten at the office in a row. I left at 9:30 PM and walked past bars filled with people for whom Tuesday night is as good a night as any for a Brooklyn Lager and a hook-up. Outside the neighborhood supermarket, a man hauled black garbage bags to the sidewalk in a cart, the same type of cart they let customers use inside. At the corner of Lafayette and Prince Streets, a New York Fire Department truck sped by; an ugly Dalmatian hung its head out one of the windows, spotted ears flapping in the wind.

The wind is not pleasant tonight -- it is a sickly breeze that chills in a damp sort of way. It rained all day today, and the air smells of wet leaves. In fact, today's weather is the complete opposite of what it was like on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. On that day, exactly six years ago, the weather had been brilliant. It was the kind of day that made you wish you were outside doing things that made you sweaty and thirsty and eager for a lemon sorbet, instead of stuck in a college classroom somewhere in New Jersey, trying to make sense of synaesthetic approaches in art-making, as had been the case for me.

On that day, a little before 9:00 AM, a student burst into the classroom and announced to the class (before our professor's permission was granted) that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.

The professor (with whom I had a loathe-hate relationship, and whose classes I failed, twice) said in a drone, "I'm going to wait for confirmation on this news before jumping to any conclusions."

I ignored him and left the classroom, out of curiosity, but also out of concern for my stock trader roommate, who had taken the train into New York City that morning, just like he did every morning, and would have arrived at the World Trade Center at around the time the plane hit. I tried calling his cellphone and couldn't get connected. And then I tried calling Sarah, my friend who worked in midtown Manhattan, the girl I had a crush on, the girl who in less than a month would become my girlfriend, the girlfriend I would marry in 2004. "We're sorry, all circuits are busy. Please try again."

So I went to the coffee shop around the corner, sat in front of the TV with a dozen strangers, and watched the world end on CNN.

Afterward, I went home and waited. New York was over 40 miles away, but that was close enough for the university to cancel classes for the remainder of the day, and the following day as well. I tried looking out the window to see if the smoke from lower Manhattan was visible from where I was (it wasn't). I finally got in touch with Sarah, who told me that she was safe, that there were no vehicles of any kind leaving the city, and that she would be staying at her boss's apartment uptown. I got a phone call from a college buddy, who was living just below the Empire State Building in midtown. He was afraid. He worried that a plane would crash into his building too, but he couldn't leave because the train and bus stations were flooded with people, some still covered in dust.

My roommate finally came home later that night, stone-faced and quiet. He had been riding the escalator up from the PATH train station to the base of the World Trade Center that morning when an explosion shook the foundations of the building. He, like everyone else, had thought that it was a bomb. Then he went outside, into the square between the two towers. The second plane hit a few minutes later, a concussive blast so loud that my roommate, who was also the drummer in our band, fell to his knees. When it started raining people, he wept with the five hundred strangers around him. And when it started raining computers and file cabinets and concrete, he ran.

By some miracle, he'd worn his tennis shoes that day.

That day was six years ago. Today, the city of New York remembered the people who died on September 11, 2001. There were ceremonies held, and speeches given, and flags flown, and prayers said, and beams of light turned on, and though I didn't participate in any of these things (for to me, there was nothing different about today, on the surface), I remember as well.

Late night

2007-09-10T23:17:00.000-04:00

No real blog post tonight -- I'm still at work, and it's 11:18 PM. Besides, the only thing worth blogging about today is the fact that there's nothing worth blogging about.

Shiso fine: a dinner at Perilla

2007-09-09T13:12:00.000-04:00

If you read this post I wrote a few weeks back, you'll know that I have a great fondness for shiso leaves, which, until just a few minutes ago, I'd forgotten is also called perilla. By coincidence, Sarah and I had dinner at the new restaurant Perilla last night, and I'm happy to say that it quite made up for my "oyster letdown" I wrote about in my previous post.

Perilla, at this point in time, is still only famous for one thing: its executive chef is Harold Dieterle III, winner of the first season of Top Chef. We don't often go to restaurants run by celebrity chefs, which can be pricey, pretentious establishments with good if not great food to match. But Perilla, situated in the West Village, turned out to be neither pretentious nor exorbitantly pricey (entrées, but for one exception, top out under $30).

We didn't have a reservation, so when we arrived at 8:00 PM on a Saturday evening, we were told that there would be a one-hour wait for a table for two. We left our name and spent the next half-hour wandering around the Village, which tends to resemble any given Main Street in any given College Town, USA on a Saturday night during the school year (except in the Village there are way more stores with names like Birthday Suit and Pink Pussycat Boutique). At one point, we browsed through CDs at a dingy record store called Disc-o-Rama, but the smell of reefer was giving Sarah a headache (I think it had more to do with the fact that she was hungry). We left, but not before I noticed that even here, amidst the ganja haze, there was a section with Christian music. I mean, they had the album Shout to the Lord, which came out when Hillsong was still part of Integrity Music, back in 1996! You can't even find that in a Christian bookstore in Tennessee nowadays.

We went back to Perilla at 8:30 and decided to have a drink at the bar while waiting for our table. The bartender, a friendly and accommodating young lass, let us try three different wines before making our selections (Sarah ordered the crisp and well-chilled Grüner Veltliner, I the earthy Montepulciano in anticipation of eating red meat). I don't remember when restaurants began to chill their red wines -- perhaps they've always done it -- but I love that they do.

Finally, at 8:50, we were ushered into the dining room and seated. Here's the thing about the menu at Perilla: at first glance, the list of entrées doesn't knock you out. Nothing seems particularly original or extravagant; it's all pretty basic, and all quite American. There's the requisite strip steak, roasted sea bass, roasted chicken, grilled lamb loin, sautéed skate wing, etc. There is a roasted duckling, uncommon, to be sure, but who hasn't had duck before? At that point, I said to myself that everything had better taste really good. I mean, knockout good. If you're going to serve basics, serve them right.

Here's what we ordered:
Appetizers

Spicy Duck Meatballs, with Okinawa yam gnocchi, water spinach, and a raw quail egg
Crispy Rock Shrimp Salad, with baby mizuna, piquillo peppers, and a mushroom soy vinaigrette

Entrées

Summer Truffle Ravioli, with sheep's milk ricotta, and forest mushrooms and peas
Grilled Angus Strip Steak, with escarole, bacon and a sweet onion-horseradish sauce
Faro Risotto (side dish), with an artichoke confit, parmesan and chili-grape salad

Dessert

Black Mission Fig and Plum Crisp, with Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream and spiced streusel

[This is turning into a full-blown restaurant review, but whatever.]
The spicy duck meatballs were standout. The result is that Sarah now likes eating duck, a surprising and welcome development. The ravioli was also good, coming with white and green asparagus (not listed on the menu) and a wonderfully refreshing citrus flavor, even if the peas were slightly undercooked. The risotto was uncanny -- it was richly flavored with butter and parmesan cheese, yet didn't taste or feel heavy. The steak was much the same -- cooked to a perfect medium-rare temperature, with even the last bite as good as the first, and topped with a whole red onion. The only off-note was the bacon bits served under the steak; too indulgent and overpowering. When I order steak, I want to taste the flesh of a cow, not the skin of a smoked porker.For the first time in perhaps years, Sarah and I wanted the exact same dessert item, so we shared the excellent fig and plum crisp, a fantastic concoction with too little ice cream and more plums than figs.
As for the decor, Sarah didn't particularly care for the mod chandelier that hung over my head, but the restaurant is tastefully and sparely decorated, and expertly straddles the line between cozy and contemporary, especially the bar area. The tables for two in the back, where we were seated, are quite close together, which made it easy to see what your neighbors had ordered. The dating couple next to us, enamored by the ravioli on our table, asked more than once what we were eating. They later admitted that they were skipping dessert entirely and living vicariously through us, too full of steak and duckling and wine.

I understood completely.

More about Perilla:
Perilla Restaurant - Official website
Frank Bruni's New York Times review
The New Yorker review
Time Out NY review

Shell shocked

2007-09-09T12:18:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Sarah and I went to the Riverside Oyster Festival, which turned out to be far less grand than its name suggests. Considering I'd heard about this thing two weeks ago and could barely contain myself in anticipation of going, it was hugely disappointing. I'd envisioned rows of vendors with canvas-roofed carts and grease-splattered aprons, dishing out oysters prepared in all manner of "county fair" styles: fried oysters, oyster po'boys, um, oyster sushi... yeah, okay, so maybe my imagination was pushing the boundaries of reality with oyster sushi, which I've only seen on the specials menu in some Japanese restaurants. But you get the idea.To my supreme dismay, once we arrived at Riverside Park (at 103rd Street, all the way on the West Side of Manhattan), we found that there was only a solitary stand serving only raw oysters. And the "festival" consisted of a whole bunch of people sitting around by the Hudson Beach area of the park, eating raw oysters and cocktail sauce off a plastic plate and ignoring a boorish, grooveless band in the vein of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones playing on a stage in the corner. [Pop culture tip for the clueless: the last time the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were popular, Bill Clinton was still President.] If you were curious what the scenic Hudson "Beach" looks like, here's helpful photograph:
To be fair, everyone knows Manhattan is hardly the first place you'd go in search of a beach. And at least the raw oysters were excellent (harvested in Maine, shucked right here in New York, cold and sweet, and requiring nary a hint of lemon juice or cocktail sauce). But there's a lesson in my disappointment: when in New York, you could attend hundreds of entertaining, unique and well-organized cultural events, or you could go to next year's Riverside Oyster Festival. And sometimes, until you're actually standing on that sand-swept patch of concrete and squinting past the four-lane highway at the rather arresting coast of New Jersey, you just can't tell the difference.

In the books

2007-09-08T23:40:00.000-04:00

Today, I did something I haven't done since I was about six years old -- I got a library card. I've spent many Mountain Dew-fueled hours in college libraries, but I haven't borrowed a book from a public library in over ten years. Until today, I didn't realize how much public libraries have changed in ten years, and how much has remained the same.

The New York Public Library has a branch one block away from my apartment, a fact I discovered just a couple of months ago. Today, I made it a point to visit it for the first time. Two things struck me: there are so many computers! and there are so many kids! Both of these things, of course, totally make sense, especially the computers, but I'm constantly amazed that there are enough children under the age of 12 in New York to fill up a room at any given time. I can't really explain this amazement. Young children are everywhere in NYC, but for some reason, I can't allow myself to believe that they do normal things like visit the library, or go to Toys R Us, or play in a playground.

Some of you may wonder if I've read any books at all in the last ten years. The fact is, every book I've read in the last ten years I either bought at a bookstore, or borrowed from a friend. Some of you may then guess that I probably haven't read very many books in the last decade. You are right. I should absolutely read more. There several writers whose works are only familiar to me by reputation: Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Lethem, Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates (both of whom taught at my alma mater, and whose inclusion on this list shames me to a degree), Philip Roth, and Jonathan Franzen. And these are just fiction writers who haven't died yet.

But they're a great start.

iWant

2007-09-06T23:54:00.000-04:00

This week saw the release of updated versions of Apple's iPod, and I want at least one of them. Yes, yes, I know I'm just positioning myself as a cog in the whole consumerism machine, and technically I don't need a new iPod, since I own four of them already. You see, I bought a second-generation iPod Mini for Sarah some time ago, and later, I received a first-gen iPod Shuffle as a free gift. When the Mini decided to stop working, I bought Sarah a new Nano, which also gave out after several months. So I bought her a second-gen Nano. It was such a futuristic and unfamiliar-looking thing that when she accidentally left it at church office one Sunday, one of the toddlers coming out of childcare found it and promptly put it in the fridge for safe keeping.

Meanwhile, I was able to revive the old Mini, and now use it. Still, it would be nice to graduate beyond a monochromatic screen.

I've played with the iPhone, a near-magical device so well designed that it may as well have time-traveled from the future. I don't particularly need a new cellphone, and especially not one with a built-in camera that merely captures 2-megapixel images. But an iPhone without the phone and camera is something I'd be in the market for, and that's exactly what the iPod Touch is. So should I get one?

I'll think about it. But quickly.

The 'roo morgue

2007-09-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

I don't intend to turn One Year in New York City into a food blog, but to write about living in NYC without writing about food as often as possible is unjust and irresponsible. And so, fresh on the heels of yesterday's post, I find myself reminiscing about the most memorable meals I've ever had, and realize that I've had a fair share of them right here in New York.

I think it's rare for people to remember particular meals based on the food alone, unless, of course, the food was so astoundingly good that it didn't matter what the occasion was. For example, if I think hard enough, I can remember every meal I had on my trip Maui, Hawaii, last year. But that has more to do with the fact that I can remember virtually everything else about my trip. Based on the quality and originality of the food alone, the most memorable Hawaiian meal was the mixed plate I had in Lahaina, a combination of disparate dishes spanning three continents of influence. It wasn't much more than street food, but really, isn't that the best kind of food?

I remember gustatory delights from other travels as well. You won't believe this, but I had one of the best Hawaiian pizzas I've ever tasted in (of all places) Canberra, Australia, in 1997. The most decadent meal I've had was at the Park Lane Hotel in London (at least I think it was there, for aside from the grandeur of the food, I remember little else owing to my host's insistence that I empty the wine bottle). And the best lobster meal I've had by far was in the great state of Rhode Island, where, at a seaside shanty, I feasted on two succulent crustaceans and heaps of coleslaw, butter and french fries for $22.

But what about New York? What of the freshly grated wasabi at Megu, the toro at Koi, the simple garlic french fries at Barmarché, the herbed butter and strip steak at Schiller's, the chocolate bread pudding at Café Colonial, the grass-fed filet mignon and wild asparagus at Craftsteak, or the chicken adobo at Cendrillon? There just isn't enough time, and the scope of this post is too narrow to accommodate the story behind every memorable meal. Plus, as the title of this post indicates, what I really wanted to write about is my new favorite meat in the world: kangaroo.

Some of you will already be aware of my affection for 'roo meat. If you're adventurous enough to try it, and you do so at an establishment that knows how to prepare it properly, you'll be rewarded with a depth of earthy flavor unknown in 90% of steakhouses out there. I'm talking about eating the meat of animals that bounce across the landscape like dropped balls, to quote Bill Bryson. You can't get that kind of flavor from a sluggish, mooing, grain-chewing beast.

Of course, in order to try kangaroo, you might start at one of the several Australian restaurants in the City, of which the most highly regarded at the moment is Eight Mile Creek, a dimly lit place recalling a cramped old English pub (the real pub is in the basement, where you can get your lager on while watching Aussie rules matches). Eight Mile Creek has decent kangaroo -- I ordered the "kanga skewers," a satisfying if slightly unrefined appetizer. The best kangaroo in New York, however, is at Public (although it may be a special menu item, since I can no longer find it on their online menu). Juicy, full of character, and joyfully tender, Public's 'roo steak remains one of the most memorable meals I've had in New York.

By the way, I've learned that there's 'roo on the menu at Knife + Fork as well. If I go, I promise to take pictures.

Gastronomic proportions

2007-09-04T22:36:00.000-04:00

I'm going to post a link to one of the best food articles I've read in my entire life. But first, a preamble.

Living in New York to a one-year countdown is like visiting New York with an enlightened tourist's agenda: you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them all. In our case, our adventurous appetites might never get around to finding satisfaction at any number of restaurants in the City in which we aspire to dine. Here's the problem: between Sarah and myself, we like food from virtually every corner of the world. If, for example, neither of us liked French food, we could just eliminate every café, boulangerie, pattiserie and restaurant from our mental lists. But we can't, because even though Sarah is not particularly fond of French cuisine, I love it, especially anything with fromage de chèvre or beurre demi-sel in it. I drool already.

The problem is compounded by the fact that several of the restaurants we would like to visit are -- how shall I put this delicately? -- stupidly expensive. Not that we don't think they are worth it. On the contrary, we have no problem spending money on a fastidiously prepared meal, made from hard-to-acquire ingredients. There are people who spend as much on a new cellphone, or a car payment, or a watch. But it does mean that these restaurant visits are very few and far between; special occasions, if you will.

But.

But, sometimes you read a food article that makes you want to empty the checking account, jump in a cab, and head over to a restaurant where you just might have the best meal in your life, and where that in itself is the special occasion. That's because the article contains these words: [It is] the most expensive restaurant in the country, if not the world. It is also the best sushi restaurant in the country, if not the world. But it's not a story about a restaurant. It's a story about food. I read this article a couple of months ago, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

Please read the whole story, all ten delightful pages of it. At the very, very least, you'll be a more knowledgeable member of civilized society.

If You Knew Sushi [Vanity Fair]

How to speak like a New Yorker IV

2007-09-03T20:55:00.001-04:00

If you've ever visited New York City, chances are you've taken a trip in a yellow cab (read my post about NYC cabs here). But a common mistake visitors make is not knowing how to tell the cab driver where you want to go. First, some cab drivers may seem uncouth, but it's no reason to be rude or impatient with them. 90% of all the cabs I've ever been in were piloted by cabbies who were skillful, knowledgeable, grateful when tipped, and polite. And the other 10%? Well, I can be sympathetic to the fact that driving a cab in New York will test anyone's patience.

Second, it's important to give the address of your destination to your cab driver in a way that helps him or her (there are over 400 women cab drivers in NYC). For example, don't tell your driver that you want to go to "532 Broadway." Instead, it's far more helpful to know the "cross-street" (i.e. the street that intersects your destination). So if you get in a cab and say, "corner of Broadway and Spring," you're more likely to get there quicker.*

Third, once you're almost at your destination, you may instruct the cabbie where exactly to pull over. Virtually all the streets in Manhattan are one-way streets, so if you're stopping at an intersection, let the cabbie know whether you'd like to stop at the "near-corner on the left" or the "far-corner on the right" or whatever applies.

* True story: Sarah and I once got in a cab because we were too tired to take the subway back to our apartment. We told the cabbie the cross-streets, but he told us that he'd only been on the job for two weeks and didn't know where exactly Mott Street intersected with Houston Street. It was the first time we ever had to give a Manhattan geography lesson to a cab driver.

Caves of steel

2007-09-01T17:18:00.000-04:00

We just got back from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where a stunning if marginally incomplete Richard Serra retrospective is on display until September 10th. If you're not familiar with Serra's unique sculptural works, click here. Most contemporary art enthusiasts will recognize him as the guy who puts up ridiculously large sheets of hot-rolled steel (richly colored with an orange patina) and constructs incidental environments with them. I first heard about him in art school -- his brother Rudy Serra used to teach there. But today was the first time I'd seen his work outside of the printed page, and it was an experience simultaneously new and primal.

New, because as you walk alongside the undulating walls of rusted steel, it feels like an alien landscape. Primal, because your brain desperately tries to make sense of this new environment, so it invents age-old scenarios. When the walls curved outward as they rose, it seemed like you were standing at the bottom of a 15-foot canyon. When they curved inward so as to hang overhead, it was like being in the shade of a cave. It was funny because as Sarah and I explored the different parts of the exhibit, she felt safest and coziest in the "cave" parts, where the walls curved inward. When I pressed her to move on, she'd do so only reluctantly. But she felt instinctively vulnerable in the "canyon" portions, as if her environment left her open to attack. How ironic that ribbons of steel placed inside the geometric confines of an art museum evokes such strong associations with natural geography and the outdoors.
Several steel walls were also placed outside the museum, in the sculpture garden (where the photo above was shot). Fantastic stuff all around.

And of course, we couldn't leave without revisiting the Piet Mondrian gallery, home of some downright brilliant canvases by my favorite painter.

[Click here to view MoMA's microsite on the Serra exhibit, including high-res images and a fascinating time-lapse video of the installation in the sculpture garden.]

A band called Battles

2007-08-31T22:42:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I went to see Battles perform at the South Street Seaport Music Festival. The night was fun for several reasons, but the two biggest are (1) the concert was free, and (2) Battles is the greatest live band I have ever seen.

Okay, the second reason is hyperbolic and possibly wrong. But consider: I have not been to a U2 show, and I have not been to a Lightning Bolt show. Lightning Bolt released my favorite album of 2005, Hypermagic Mountain, and their live show is the stuff of legend (one of my co-workers attended a Lightning Bolt show in Brooklyn and told me that the crowd was so brutalized by the music that they started tearing umbrellas apart). I've also never seen Radiohead live, nor the Rolling Stones, nor Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, nor Rush. So it's possible that I'm missing out on something better than what I saw tonight. However, I have seen Mute Math. And I love Mute Math. I've spoken to Paul Meany, the lead singer of Mute Math, and Roy Mitchell-Cardenas, the bassist. Mute Math is one of my all-time favorite bands.

But here is the truth: Battles is better than Mute Math. Battles is what Mute Math will be in fifteen years.

Anyway, about the concert: I got there really early. The stage was set up outdoors on Pier 17 at the seaport, between a giant schooner and a giant Pizzeria Uno, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. There were already people waiting in front of the stage. The crowd was made up of really skinny boys and the not-so-skinny girls who love them. All the girls had blond highlights in their hair. Even the blond girls had blond highlights. One guy sitting at the front was reading Schindler's List and chainsmoking Kool XLs.

I sat and waited along with everyone else. A young man wandered over and asked me who was playing tonight, and when I said, "Deerhunter. And Battles," he looked at me like I'd just spoken Swahili. I'll bet he was expecting me to say, "Radiohead."

The opening band, Deerhunter, came on at 7:25 PM, almost an hour after I'd gotten there. The lead singer was the skinniest guy I've ever seen. This is not hyperbole at all. Every time he stepped on his stompboxes, I thought he would break a hip. But he didn't. The rest of the band wasn't nearly as interesting, but the bassist would do a stately bow to the audience at the end of each song, which was kind of funny and helpful at the same time because if he hadn't bowed, I wouldn't have known the song was over. Deerhunter made very competent noise-rock music with some ethereal banshee vocals, but they're young and have a while to go before I'd consider buying one of their albums.

Deerhunter played a forty-minute set. The guy reading Schindler's List moved on to Jodi Picoult's The Pact, but he never got up from the ground and barely looked up from his book during the entire set. This was awkward because he was sitting right at the front, and right at my feet. I figured he was just waiting for the main act.

Battles finally came on at about 8:30. The bassist came up first, noodling around with his instrument all by himself, making the signal loop and feed back into itself. Then, one at a time, the rest of the band got up on stage. Complete sonic mayhem ensued. Unless you've heard a noise-rock band, or a really loud math-rock band, I have no adequate method of describing what Battles songs sound like. I suppose you could listen to the samples on their Myspace site, but samples can't properly convey the layered noise that proceeded from the speakers tonight. I tried to put myself in the position of someone who'd only ever listened to, say, the Beach Boys. These are the questions I'd ask: Are their instruments in tune? Are they even playing instruments? Are all their amplifiers broken? Why does the drummer have to play his drums using the butt-end of his sticks? Doesn't he know that it will make his drums sounds too loud? And why do the other guys insist on playing multiple instruments at the same time? Why are they pulling cables and wires in and out of their keyboards and computers and signal processors in the middle of a song? Why all the fiddling with knobs? What? Why can't I hear you?

This reminds me of the general inability of Americans to accurately describe the smell and taste of durians.

That's the unfortunate thing. I had a blast at the Battles show, but I can't explain it to you. You'll just have to go to their Myspace site, listen to the track called "Atlas" and imagine the band performing the song live, exactly the way it sounds on the recording. And if you can imagine finding joy in seeing and listening to that live performance, in understanding how those bizarro noises are generated on stage, and in headbanging to the ruthlessly consistent drum beat along with three thousand other people, then you can imagine how it was tonight.

A hairy tale

2007-08-31T14:39:00.000-04:00

I've just now gotten back from my haircut at one of the most interesting barber shops I've ever been to, a dandy's paradise called Freemans Sporting Club. Freemans is actually a men's clothier; I asked how much a made-to-measure suit goes for and was told, "about $3000." For that princely sum, they'll make you a suit that fits like a glove, from virtually any material, including deadstock wool manufactured in the 1950s. But I'm just here to get my hair cut, and the barbershop is in the back of the store. The haircuts are much, much cheaper than the suits.

Freemans Barbershop looks like it was built in the 1920s (to see what I mean, check out a picture here), but it wasn't. It's only eleven months old, so the whole place is anachronistic. The barber chairs were made in the 1920s, but there's a 21st century stereo system playing rock n' roll on a window sill. There's a rack of this month's men's magazines (GQ, Details, Esquire) by the waiting bench, but there's also a secret stash of Penthouse issues from the 1970s under the bench. The amply tattooed barber is an amiable 30-something chap who is privy to the latest in technology -- he's looking to import a hot new Japanese hair product into New York -- but wears a porkpie hat and uses a straight razor. And his name is Shorty. It says so on his business card.

How was the haircut? Quick, unfussy, and nuanced; Shorty knows his stuff. I'll be going back, but next time, I'll bring my own reading material.

More short notes

2007-08-30T23:20:00.000-04:00

First, an explanation: Every time I write some short notes, like I'm doing at this very moment, it's not that I have nothing to write about -- it's that I have too many things to write about. I wrote on Monday that I occasionally have about fifteen things in my head at the same time, waiting to be typed out in little digital letters on a too-small monitor, all vying for the spotlight. I used the number fifteen then because I needed a random number, but tonight, I really do have fifteen things to write about. Is that just an incredible coincidence, you might ask, or is Darren lying through his teeth? We shall see.
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The last thing I wrote was number one. This is number two: I've been given the day off tomorrow (Friday), a fact I should be celebrating but strangely am not. Days off from work are few and far between, even in a creative industry like mine, so I end up using them for things I have to do rather than things I want to do.
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Which means, in all likelihood, I'm going to get a haircut tomorrow. In a previous post, I told you how much my laundry bill is. There's no way I'm going to admit how much I have to pay to get my hair cut. That's the problem with hair -- it grows back! And when my hair is long, I look like the kid Bruce Lee beat up in high school.
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The good news is that after I get my haircut, I'll still have time to visit the Museum of Modern Art, my single favorite art venue in the world.
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Also, I'll be attending the Seaport Music Festival in the evening.
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So it looks as if I'll be having a well mapped-out, eventful day tomorrow. But to paraphrase Robert Burns, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. And let me tell you something: there's no better place than New York to make a man feel like a mouse.
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At the very least, I'll have an extended weekend. Monday is the federal holiday known as Labor Day (not to be confused with May Day, which is celebrated on May 1st outside the United States).
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This is item number eight of fifteen: I found out Cameron Diaz is in New York shooting a movie. An acquaintance of mine sat next to her at a Korean restaurant, and that very same day, I was walking home from work and saw that the street was going to be closed off to accommodate a film crew. There were signs posted up on buildings informing the public that parking on the street was disallowed because Twentieth Century Fox was shooting something called What Happens in Vegas... So I went home and looked it up on IMDb, and guess who's starring in it.
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Here's my connection to Cameron Diaz. Remember Prince Street Cleaners, the laundromat I go to around the corner? [Read this post to refresh your memory.] Well, a few months ago, I stopped by to pick up my laundry, and John, the guy who runs the place, told me that if I'd dropped them off later in the day, I would've bumped into Cameron Diaz. She'd ducked into the laundromat to get a button re-sewn, and had waited inside as patiently as the paparazzi had waited outside, cameras in hand. Now, I don't particularly care for Cameron Diaz, but she obviously has superb taste in picking laundromats.
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Actors are in the city all the time, because at any given time, there are countless movies and tv shows being filmed in New York. But no matter how common this is, people will still stop and gawk. When they were shooting You Don't Mess with the Zohan a few weeks ago, I met a woman who told me she was waiting by the side of the street for Adam Sandler's limo to drive by. Never mind that there was no guarantee of even catching a glimpse of the actor behind those tinted windows. Ridiculous, I thought, as I took out my camera and waited with her.
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Number eleven: Speaking of ridiculous, there were two topless sunbathers on the roof of the building next to my office this past Tuesday. Tuesday was cloudy.
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Twelve: Oh, who am I kidding? I don't really have
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fifteen things
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to write
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about.

For those about to rock we salute you

2007-08-29T23:29:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I wrote a post entitled Are you experienced? in which I listed several things I have yet to do in New York that I consider part of the "New York City experience." I left out two things that I never got to do and never will: (1) Go to the top of the World Trade Center, and (2) See a punk band perform at CBGB.
Today, Hilly Kristal, the founder of New York's iconic punk rock club CBGB, died of lung cancer complications (read about it here). I didn't know Kristal personally, of course, but I used to read his recollections as they appeared on the official CBGB website. And I used to wonder why I hadn't yet found the time or opportunity to catch a show there, especially since CBGB is not more than several hundred yards away from my apartment. Did I feel too un-cool to attend a show in one of the most revered performance spaces in rock history? Was I intimidated by the lo-fi, derelict aesthetic of the place? I once spoke to Matt Thiessen, lead singer of one of my favorite bands, Relient K, over the phone (I was interviewing him for Relevant Magazine). When he heard I lived in New York, he said that he wanted to go back to New York and play a show, possibly at CBGB. Would I have gone if one of my favorite bands was playing the venue?

I'll never know the answer for sure -- Relient K never played CBGB, and never will, because the club closed last year (read more here). So I never got to enter the space where legends like the Ramones, Blondie, Television and Talking Heads made not just music, but history. I'm no punk, except in my wildest, most implausible dreams, and I can't even consider myself a real punk music fan (I don't even really like the Clash). But I've been musically influenced by so many bands who have played CBGB, including Social Distortion, Green Day and many others. Punk rock informs even the music I play in church, which may sound antithetical, but really isn't, if you think about it a certain way.

So tonight, in honor of Hilly Kristal, and in memory of the greatest rock venue I never went to, I'm wearing my CBGB t-shirt to bed. Good night.

How to speak like a New Yorker III

2007-08-28T22:16:00.000-04:00

If you've ever spent a significant amount of time enjoying New York City nightlife, you've probably heard the term "B&T" or "bridge and tunnel." This term I actually don't recommend using, only because I think it's derogatory and exclusionary in its most popular sense; B&T refers to people who aren't Manhattan residents but come into the city (via the bridges or tunnels) for dinner, drinks, or entertainment. The Urban Dictionary says it succinctly. Wikipedia has a more comprehensive description. My question is: are you still B&T if you came in by the Staten Island ferry?

Short notes

2007-08-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

I haven't blogged since late Friday evening, so for those of you awaiting a new post, I apologize for the delay. Sarah and I were in New Jersey for most of the weekend, sharing a Chilean syrah with old friends, having dinner with relatives, and occasionally doing things completely unfamiliar to us. For example, I got to pick shiso leaves right off the plants in my in-laws' backyard, a new and somewhat exciting activity for me. I love shiso. If your experience with Korean food is anything more than cursory, you probably know what it is. An old roommate, who is Korean, used to insist that the leaves were also called "beefsteak." I used to insist that he was insane. But now, years later, Wikipedia has proven him right. The moral is, some crazy people are right.
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If you've ever tried writing daily in a diary, journal or blog, you'll sympathize with my struggle with discipline and consistency. On some days, I can't think of a single thing to write. On others, I want to write about fifteen different things, yet since those fifteen things all seem equally important, none of them seem particularly worthy. Regardless, I consider the self-imposed pressure to write every day to be healthy. Writing is more an act of will than a response to spontaneous inspiration. I read somewhere that the easier it is to read a piece of writing, the harder the writer had to work on it. Like many snippets of wisdom, I have no clue who first wrote this, so if you know, please leave a comment, so I can properly credit the source.
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Speaking of comments, I disabled the login requirement for commenting several days ago, so you may comment away!

Without me, without you

2007-08-25T01:00:00.000-04:00

I'm fairly familiar with the giants of science fiction cinema and literature: Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Terry Gilliam, John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, etc. I love reading a good sci-fi book, and I fondly recall reading massive short story compilations that were invariably edited by Asimov and/or Martin H. Greenberg back in the early 90s. But my mind is better wired for visual stimulation, which partly explains why the covers on some of those compilations were more fascinating to me than the stories themselves. This also explains why the last scene from Back to the Future so affected me when I first saw it in the late 80s that all I did for weeks afterward was draw DeLoreans, even during school.

My favorite thing about how "the future" is portrayed in paintings and movies is not how strange or unfamiliar everything looks, but precisely the fact that there are recognizable elements to even the most futuristic scene. For example, I once had a history book written for teens that described what archaeologists have to do in order to appropriately study a long gone civilization. I cannot, for the life of me, recall anything substantial about the book except for a series of paintings in the final chapter that showed how a riverside community in the year 1500 might progress from tents to log cabins to trading outposts to factories to skyscrapers and onward, all in the span of 600 years. The most memorable illustration was the one that depicted the same community in the year 2100, now a gleaming city with neon lights, flying cars, tubular buildings and glass domes. And yet, it was still positioned by the river, and the geography of the place, though much altered from 600 years before, was recognizable. But the book went on to suggest that 500 years after that, if people had abandoned the city, it would just be another archaeological site, overgrown with trees and inhabited by wildlife.

Have you ever wondered what a megalopolis like New York would look like if humans just disappeared? Personally, my thoughts have never been that morbid, but it's fascinating all the same to see a visual interpretation -- an artist's rendering, if you will -- of the notion. Check out this slideshow of images, based on ideas in The World Without Us, a new book that asks what our environment would look like without the impact of humans. And try not to think depressing thoughts.

On the fringe

2007-08-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

Tonight, we attended a play staged as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. [There are Fringe festivals all over the world now, the largest of which is the Edinburgh Fringe, the original inspiration for the New York one. The Adelaide Fringe is the apparently the second-largest in the world. Who knew?] Sarah and I have seen our fair share of plays in New York, most of them very good. But it'd been over a year since our last one, and I'd forgotten how fun it is to enter a small, dark theater where everything is painted black, and watch real people perform on a stage. Theater acting can be exhilarating to watch -- I'm always a little nervous to see if someone will flub his or her lines. When two characters have a conversation or a confrontation, and the actors perform with nuanced rhythm and drama, it's better than watching most cinematic action scenes, by far. This sounds obvious to people familiar with theater, but I suspect there are millions of people who hold motion pictures up as the paragon of entertainment. I do not necessarily agree.

Tonight's play was a bit of an uneven affair, unfortunately. The first act was poorly written and poorly performed, but after intermission, the play picked up speed and became quite enjoyable. Also, one of the characters pulls out a pistol in the second act, which always makes for high drama. When someone waves a semi-automatic handgun around on stage, you just know it's going to go off at some point. In fact, I think it's a playwright's duty; once you introduce a gun, you owe it your audience to write a scene in which a character uses it. [It's one of the unofficial rules of screenwriting too, except I can't attribute it to anyone because I don't remember where I read it.]

Short notes

2007-08-24T00:09:00.001-04:00

Old St. Patrick's Cathedral, the first Catholic cathedral built in New York, is right across and down the street from our apartment. I was on my way to work this morning and I saw a man in a black hat walking into the cathedral, looking a tad tired and downtrodden for 9:00 AM. He was wearing a black sweater with "Larry Flynt's Hustler Club" on the back. I wanted to ask him many, many questions, but that would have been rude. I left him alone.
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Tonight, I made dinner for my brother-in-law, Aaron, and a family friend, Al. I couldn't decide what to make, but Sarah suggested I make fish, so I looked online and came upon this stellar recipe for grilled tuna steaks. If you decide to make it, I highly recommend making a cold cucumber and carrot salad to go with it (just julienne some fresh cucumber and carrots into very, very fine strips and place in a pile on top of the fish after grilling).
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I'm going to see Battles, a math-rock band, at the Seaport Music Festival next week. I'll blog about the experience and perhaps take some pictures.

Are you experienced?

2007-08-22T21:49:00.000-04:00

For years, I've wanted to come up with an "Experience List" -- a collection of things to do. I'd have to put it online, I thought to myself, and make it interactive so people can check off the things they've done, and get an Experience score at the end. Swum with a pod of killer whales? Check. Climbed a coconut tree? Check. Driven a yellow Ferrari more than a hundred miles? Check. Run in ten inches of snow with no shoes on? Check. You are more experienced than any living person ought to be. Consider a career in outer space exploration.

[This reminds me of the fact that even though I love watching films and consider myself a movie buff of sorts, I still haven't seen Raging Bull, It's A Wonderful Life, On the Waterfront, Casablanca, Taxi Driver, Seven Samurai, Scarface, Annie Hall, North by Northwest, or Ben-Hur. Yes, yes, it's a shame...]

I haven't come up with the Experience List yet, but I have thought about the many things I haven't yet done that are virtually essential to living in -- or even visiting -- New York. Some of them are a bit "touristy" but it doesn't make them any less worthy of doing. I'm sure I will think of many more in the year to come, even as I try to check the following experiences off the list:

Dine at Nobu.
Get a pastrami sandwich at Katz's Deli.
Tour the Statue of Liberty.
Visit the Bronx Zoo.
Attend Shakespeare in the Park.
Run the New York City Marathon.
Catch a major league baseball game involving these guys or these guys.
Be a member of the Museum of Modern Art.
Listen to Les Paul play at the Iridium Jazz Club.

"Wow," you might think as you peruse the list, "this fool hasn't done anything!" Not true -- I have done some things, including:

Rollerblade down Broadway.
View the city from the top of the Empire State Building.
Hike the largest remaining natural forest area in Manhattan.
Visit the Brooklyn Aquarium.
See dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History.
Dine at Peter Luger Steakhouse.

Anything else I should add to either list?