I watched the fireworks from our humble yet awesome rooftop last night. It was actually a spectacular view–you could see the big 34th street show as well as the Statue of LIberty/South Street Sea Port show and another show in Brooklyn.
The gloomy weather lead me to a weird realization. The 4th of July is to celebrate our independence from the King and Queen, but I wonder if the use of fireworks in the celebrations stems from the fact that we’re actually celebrating war. The overcast skies created a scene of obscured flashes in the clouds, bright explosions near ground level and loud distant booms. Comparing it to the constructed revolutionary battle scenes from movies, (John Adams, awesome), I’d say the two are eerily similar.
I finally saw the Takashi Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Musuem. Most people are probably know (or don’t know) Murakami for his work with Louis Vutton–multi-colored LV logoed bags and wallets– or his collaborations with Kanye West–album art, music video direction. Here’s a nice blurb by Marc Jacobs about Murakami. I didn’t know much about his work but the aspect that I found most fascinating was that his works each take hundreds if not thousands of laborious hours to create.
For example, Gero Tan may look like some sort of crazy sketch that someone threw together in Illustrator, it’s actually an enormous painting that took thousands of man-hours to concept and generate.
It’s been shockingly hot the past couple days. Last year I made some mistakes by trying to fight the heat by not fighting the heat, i.e. I thought I could hack it with out an A/C, then I thought I could hack it with a weak A/C. I learned my lesson. Full on A/C all the time. It’s worth it. I get hot really easily.
They have a wondrous collection of armor and battlements for medieval Europe. I was disappointed to find out, however, that most of the suits of armor were for show or for tournament competition such as jousting. I found myself more interested in everyday objects that were preserved…real objects that real people used.
I went to the Met this past weekend with Paula. She drew, I explored. They have these great reconstructions of 17th century French interiors. They were all of hotels in Paris. I didn’t understand why they were all from elegant hotels in Paris, did only hotels have interiors?
Cherry Blossoms are very pretty. We went in the early morn and enjoyed them without the oft too common New York crowds. (I went last year, there was a 30 minute line just to get in, then once inside, it was impossible to even find a spot on grass to sit.)
On Friday, we moved out of our 11th floor office at 55 Broad St, to the 28th floor of 80 Broad St. While the new building and office space is a vast improvement, I definitely couldn’t complain about sharing the best room in the company. My desk is the one with the coffee on it.
Look at all those damn coats. It still feels like Winter around here, and west coasters keep on bragging about how it’s 70 out, or how they went and laid out on the beach during their lunch break. Thankfully, however, I’m headed home next week.
I spent most of today doing some behind the scenes coding and blog work. Wordpress released a new version, 2.5, which has many improvements over the previous version, which, in itself, is much better than moveable type. On my blog, I added a link to the rss feed, made some pagination fixes, fixed some minor layout and spacing issues, and got search working. I’m pretty happy with search, give it a shot. Works pretty well, eh?
One of the cool things at the auto show was a dynamometer demo sponsored by Lexus. They had a tuned IS330 on the dyno and were lettting people sit in as passengers while one of the techs did a dyno run. Pretty awesome, as I’ve never seen a dyno in person, and the Lexus sounded pretty nice, but you couldn’t see any of the dyno readings. It would have been a bit more engaging to see a huge display with torque and horsepower. My joke at the time was: “Talk about going nowhere…fast.” Har har har.
I had a nice little weekend, going to the auto show and eating Fried Chicken. The New York Auto Show was twice large as the SF auto show, but had about five times as many people. At some manufacturers’ booths it was so crowded that the flow of traffic came to a standstill…like at the Lamborghini booth.
After the car show, we went to BBQ Chicken, a semi-new Korean fast food chicken chain. Prices were the same as KFC, but quality was way better. Check out their menu to get hungry. We also sampled some yogurt at the new Red Mango in the West Village. Legend has it that Red Mango is the original Pinkberry. It was supposedly the first major Korean chain of tart yogurt and fresh fruit, but Pinkberry got its foot in the American door first and that 2 year head start gave it significant business traction.
Red Mango’s yogurt tasted smoother, less tart and more dairy-y than Pinkberry. The toppings tasted less fresh but that might be because most of the berries and whatnot are currently out of season (it’s Winter still). I’m not quite sure I liked it–it felt too heavy for what should just be frozen water and white powder flavor. It actually felt a little guilty, it was that heavy. Wait, did I just say I felt guilty for eating a small frozen yogurt? Nevermind. For now, my vote still goes to Pinkberry.
At midnight every year, sometime in March, the circus comes to town. In NYC, this involves walking elephants down a closed 34th street from the Midtown Tunnel to Madison Square Garden. I posted up in the middle of Hearld Square, thinking that would be best place see the procession. We were 2 hours too early, so we went and got a drink and talked about normal elephant stuff–how tall they are, what kind of sounds they make, alternatives to marching them down a closed city street at 1am…
They finally came, with a wake of people, and I was inevitatably swept along. If you walked at a brisk pace, you could just keep up with them, but if you ran, you could get ahead, take more pictures and see the ring master again. I ran with them from Hearld Square to Madison Square Garden and into the press area by way of sneaking by a police barricade. And then one of elephants took a dump. It was, like the book says, huge. So I left.
I think we’ve all had enough of you. You’re cold and blistery. You’ve rained on my parade not one but three times. I think it’s high time you packed up your stuff and went back to where you came from.
A while ago I stumbled across this beef jerky shop in Chinatown. On the outside, there is a large sign that tells what types of jerky they have. It reads something like signs in the picture. Inside, there is a woman behind an (indoor) charcoal grill smoking slices and a glass case with lots of freshly grilled meats.The stuff is amazing. I’m told this is similar to Taiwan-style beef jerky. It’s sweet but rich and has an intense charcoal flavor, that you won’t find with any store-bought jerky. It’s not tough or chewy and goes great with Hitachino.
I’ve always had a penchant for yard work and gardening. I grew up taking care of a 1/3 acre yard of shurbs, bushes, fruit trees and weeds. I think I did 6 hours of watering a week. I’m very proficient with lopping shears and a 5HP chipper shredder. I bought a spade headed shovel and a rake in college just to do some yard work around our rented duplex.
So it comes as no suprise that I need some sort of contact with plant life to balance out the urban fever. I have an indoor bonsai I bought online and had shipped UPS 2-day. I now also have an herb garden…well what will eventually be an herb garden–scallions, thyme, rosemary, mint and *hopefully* Thai basil. Yahooo.
A while ago I stumbled across this 
