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2004-10-06T01:21:00.000-04:00

Now that we're back in California, we have a differently named blog.

Broadway Roundup

2004-08-20T20:42:00.001-04:00

I realize we forgot to write about a bunch of the shows we saw over the summer, so here are the other ones I remember:

The Frogs: We went to see The Frogs at the Lincoln Center. It's Nathan Lane's new musical, adapted from an ancient Greek play by Aristophanes. (It's a loose adaptation; I'm pretty sure the original didn't have musical numbers about the importance of turning off cellphones.) The premise is that Dionysus wants to bring back a really good poet to inspire people to stop ignoring what their leaders are doing. I'm a little skeptical about whether that would work - I mean, people who don't care about what their leaders are doing usually feel that way because they have bigger immediate concerns, and it's pretty hard to justify that the election of one leader over another will have any actual effect on that concern. Anyway, the plot doesn't matter, because it's just setup to give the characters something to talk about. The strength of the play is the dialogue. He gets Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare in a room together for a battle of words, and they all just riff off each other for a while. Plus, the neon dancing frogs were neat.

Hairspray: Hairspray was tons of fun, and I absolutely cannot get the music out of my head. "Yooooou can't stop the beat ...." Carly Jibson is fantastic. This is a must-see.

Chicago: This production was terribly disappointing. The one redeeming feature is that this theater has standing-room tickets, so at least I only forked over $20 for the experience. I enjoyed the movie, and Andrew enjoyed the touring production he saw in Los Angeles a few years ago (with Bebe Neuwirth), but this one just fell flat. Some of the actors don't sing very well; most don't dance very well; and this is a very minimalist production so there's not much to look at either.

Musical of Musicals, The Musical: This was cute, but sort of longer than the material could support it. The parodies are right on, though; the writer has really done a good job capturing different musical styles and making them work together. It's probably an intended irony that this musical is more about paying rent than "Rent" is.

The Producers: This cast is pretty good, although having seen The Frogs I wish I could have seen the original cast do The Producers. The "Springtime For Hitler in Germany" musical number is one of my all-time favorites. The whole thing is tremendously funny and well worth seeing. Note that the super-cheap seats have a bad view, especially if you're short, because the balcony has a very tall railing.

Caroline, or Change: This is one of the few "dramatic" musicals we went to, and it was well worth it. Tonya Pinkins has an amazing voice and dramatic presence. This is really different that most other shows but it's really good.

Cookin': Like Stomp, except there is some attempt at plot and it involves Korean cooking instruments. Beware: there is some audience participation involved.

Movin' Out: A modern rock ballet with no dialogue. This is a good introduction to ballet for someone who likes Billy Joel music but thinks that ballet is for sissies. It's light and fun; we enjoyed it.

Fiddler on the Roof: Alfred Molina is a way better Tevya than a Doc Ock. He just exudes the right warm fuzziness for the role. (Plus he looks more distinguished with a beard.) The music is excellent; I was surprised to find that I knew a lot of these songs from somewhere else. The orchestra is on the stage so you can see them, and the fiddler is pretty impressive.

I think that's everything we haven't written about elsewhere. We wanted to see Wicked and The Boy From Oz, but tickets were sold out months in advance.

Eliot Spitzer Wants You To Rock The Vote

2004-08-19T00:13:00.000-04:00

We ended up at a Democrat concert/rally on Thursday, and Eliot Spitzer was there. We had worked our way to the front of the crowd because I'm short and can't see over other people, so I was about three feet from him when he said that progressive movements are always the product of the effort of young people, and the only way to change the world is to do it. That was pretty cool. He was way better than the band, which was miked really badly (so there was enough noise to make your insides wiggle, but you couldn't actually hear anything). John Wesley Harding was there too. Then there was this other guy whose name I meant to remember, who had this neat rant from the perspective of a revolutionary (which ended with the thought that if you don't vote, you're just doing what they want you to do). Anyway, he looked sort of like Alan Rickman. I wish I remembered his name.

The anti-Bush folks are out in full force. Most days if I go out into midtown for lunch, I'm stopped by kids in DNC t-shirts doing fundraising. They always ask me if I want to beat Bush, and I say yeah, I don't want him to be re-elected. Then they ask me if I want to give money to John Kerry. And this is the part where I realize that don't actually want to vote for John Kerry, and I'm not the least bit proud to be a registered Democrat if this is the best the party can do. I want to vote NO. I remember at Caltech there was always a NO option on the ballot for student offices; if NO won, then the office would remain empty for that year. One year while I was there, NO did win for senior class president, and I can't say I noticed the difference.

But I always end up giving the DNC kids the crumpled bills from my pockets anyway; whatever change I have from lunch. It leaves me with this hollow feeling, that I'm contributing to perpetuate the same system regardless of whether the lesser or greater evil wins. I remember it was great fun to be thirteen years old and campaigning for Richard Stallings (a Democratic senate contender in Idaho); it was even greater fun to be seventeen and campaigning for an assortment of local Democrat candidates; and that Howard Dean had recaptured some of that hope and fun earlier in this election season. I think the common thread is that these are candidates I would want to invite into my home for dinner because they would create interesting, passionate, and informed conversation around the table. Bush and Kerry are sound bites - an echo of an echo of what was once an idea but is now just noise, carefully calibrated not to offend its core constituency.

I guess if I have to be a sound bite, it ought to be the one that won't further hasten armageddon. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. pthbhththhththh.

The Spirit of Django Reinhardt

2004-08-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

I can't believe we forgot to post about this. On July 28, we went to see "The Spirit of Django Reinhardt" at the Lincoln Center. Django Reinhardt was some French dude who put together American jazz and gypsy music in the 1930s, which means the music sounds like jazz except it's coming from unexpected instruments. The concert was performed by seven musicians who had studied in that style. It was like nothing I've heard before. Not that I make a habit of going to classical concerts or anything - if they're all this cool, maybe I'll do this more often. There was a jazz violinist. See, I never would have even put those words in a sentence together, but apparently there is more than one (the playbill says that this violinist, Roby Lakatos, is "one of Europe's major jazz violinists"). He just wailed on that violin, playing really fast and getting lots of range out of it. OK, that's not a very descriptive description, but I don't know the right words for what violins are supposed to sound like. Anyway, at the end, after the violinist had finished this really long and complicated solo, the lead guitarist, Stochelo Rosenberg, took the violin from him and played a pretty good solo of his own.

Andrew and Lexi Go to White Castle

2004-08-08T18:47:00.000-04:00

We started the day in the proper frame of mind to try these strange, puck sized hamburgers and then see the movie that bears their name. Our journey was a much simpler one. Neil Patrick Harris played no part in it, other than discussions of his outstanding performance in Assassins. We ordered a six pack and a cheese fries. Lexi's analysis of the burgers as the American Chasiubao is fairly accurate. Each burger is mainly soft sweet bun wrapped around a slice of meat so small that it is difficult to judge its quality. The grilled onions and burger grease create a kind of a sauce. They come with a choice of regular cheese, jalapeno cheese, or bacon and cheese (there's almost more bacon than burger meat). There are also chicken and fish counterparts. I like the chicken cheese best of all the options, even though the strip of chicken was mostly breading. The fries were hot and fresh though. It was slightly disappointing to find out that cheese fries means fries with a tiny tub of colored, flavored oil similar to 7-11 nacho cheese. Our White Castle experience did not go off without any setbacks, as they were out of not only ketchup but water as well (I wouldn't have cared before, but now that I'm avoiding caffeine, I can't just drink gallons of diet coke as I used to so I have to revert back to the basic staple of life H20 for liquid refreshment). It was an interesting experience, but I would suggest to all those Californians that may be craving this East Coast "Delicacy" that they buy the freezer packs and microwave away. I doubt the experience will lose any of its savor. Or better yet, skip White Castle and go right to the nearest In-N-Out for a truly tasty burger. (It's a shame we will never see a movie of similar nature based around In-N-Out what with the Bible verses on their bags and fry baskets and all)

Check out the Andrew and Lexi go to White Castle photo montage at:

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/newyorkwhitecastle/index.htm

I've also updated the Subversive Graffiti Pics. I'm a little scared. The Young Republicans have spray paint. And neat little stencils too. Aren't they so cute being all ribald and painting on the side walk. See the pics at:

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/newyorksubversive/index.htm

Bye

Hiking on Staten Island

2004-08-08T13:20:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've had time to write. busy busy busy..

Yesterday I woke up and had a hankering to see nature. Central Park is great and all, but you're always aware that you're still in the city. My initial plan was to rent bikes and go to Long Island to bike through wine country, but tis-the-season for renting bikes, and the bike stores in the area didn't have any left when we got there. We picked up a guidebook - Urban Adventure New York City by David Howard - and found the hiking trail on Staten Island. It was surprising to me that Staten Island has so much green area, because it doesn't look that way from the outside. But there's this 2,800 acre greenbelt tucked away in the middle. (In case you're wondering how to get to the greenbelt, because the website has no meaningful directions, take bus S74 from the ferry terminal to Rockland Avenue, then walk north-ish on Rockland to the park headquarters, where there are trail maps.) We hiked the blue trail, and were soon out of sight of civilization. Except for the shards of beer bottles lining the trail and the occasional sound of a distant police siren, there were no signs of other people. (The trail does occasionally detour through suburbia to cross roads, though.) The park is really nice; there were all sorts of little critters in the woods, and some ponds with stuff growing in them. This includes mosquitoes - Andrew is now covered in mosquito bites.

Mosquito bites notwithstanding, it was fun trip. I'd never been on the ferry before, and that was fun. We spent a leisurely three hours on the hiking trail, and it looks like there's a lot more area around there to explore later.

Movin Out - On Rollerblades

2004-08-07T12:05:00.000-04:00

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to get tickets to anything in New York. I've got to stop trying to show up when the ticket office opens. You need to get there atleast 2 hours ahead of time to have any chance of getting anything. I spent yesterday chasing tickets that were already gone. From Shakespeare in the Park to the Theater Development Fund, the lines were blocks long right at the moment the office opened. So in desperation, I started wandering around, looking for a theater that had any tickets left. I found some tix to Movin' Out.

After that I spent the afternoon lifting weights. Then I met Lexi at Central Park to rollerblade. My stride has been getting a lot better. This complicates things as my ability to brake has yet to catch up. The problem is that just as I'm right handed, I'm apparently right footed too. I can keep balance on my right leg much longer than on my left leg. As the brake is on my right foot, I have trouble keeping balance on my left as I stick out my right to stop me. It's going to be a while before I become ambifootstrous enough to stop when I want to.

We ate at the Heartland Chop House. They had the most enormous Prix Fixe. Lexi got three times the steak she could eat. We also had their beer sampler. There was an unfortunate prevalence of fruit flavored beers. This wouldn't have been a problem, except for the lingering memory of the apricot ale I had along with cold cheese sausage on the fateful birthday fishing trip for Keith. I'm not totally giving up on apricot ales the way Lexi gave up on Vodka after my 21st birthday, but I have to admit that apricot ale is a lot less pleasant than it used to be.

I found some tickets to Movin' Out, the Billy Joel musical. Lexi really wanted to see it and I like a few of his songs. Neither of us expected the new age rock-ballet that we got. There was no dialogue. The entire story was told in a combination of the lyrics of Billy Joel's songs and the movements of the dancers. There was much frantic spinning to demonstrate a whole plethora of emotional vignettes. They lose the girl, they twirl. They're fighting paranoia in the jungles of vietnam, they twirl. They come home and start doing smack, they twirl. Always, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

We finished out the night by taking another trip on our skates north along the Hudson. I really love the bike/skate path along the Hudson. It's nearly perfectly flat and very well paved. I can really build up some speed on it. We did about 7 miles round trip and then came home and collapsed in front of the first episode of Babylon 5 season 4.

Biking Northern Manhattan

2004-08-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

The weather looked a little foreboding early today, but it quickly cleared into a very beautiful day. There's a great bike and rollerblade lane along the Hudson river. The parks were well kept all the way along the west side of Manhattan. The ride along that stretch was perhaps the most peaceful moment that I've had in New York.

It was a little less peaceful for the second half of the trip as I lost the bike path for a while and had to bike in New York traffic. I cut east across 165th St. and went down 1st Ave. for a while until I found the bike path again.

Halfway back down the island, I came across a bridge to Ward Island. It seems to be an island dedicated solely to providing teenagers with a place to go and drink or smoke. There were two guys drinking cheap beer near the dump on Ward Island. And I swear I passed their friends on my way back over the bridge on the phone asking where they were and if they had the stuff.

Pictures from my ride are up at:

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/newyorkbikenorthmanhattan/index.htm

Happy Anniversary

2004-08-05T12:02:00.000-04:00

Our anniversary didn't turn out quite as we had hoped, but we had fun anyway. We had planned to go to a reading by Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie and others. But when we got there, the line went around the block twice. I hope that my Douglas Adams curse doesn't claim Vonnegut too. I heard that Douglas Adams was in Santa Barbara while I was there, studying for my masters degree. I kept putting off going to see him speak. I found out later that he had died, in Santa Barbara, right before his last speaking engagement.

With our original plans obviously not going to work out, we found a nice Sushi place around NYU. It was good, cheap sushi and sake and the Manchurian Candidate at a Time Square Movie Theater. We've gotten a couple of unlimited metrocards so we've been hopping around the city like crazy. It's nice to decide to have dinner at NYU and then catch a movie in Time Square and not have to worry about how to get there.

Before we met for dinner, I went to the financial district to see the Giscard Games. It was this interpretive dance show, where women dressed as floor traders danced up and down the steps of the federal building to mimic the violent turmoil of the market. The music sounded like a tribal techno remix of Pink Floyd's "Money". The dancers woke to the bell. Then they angrily gesticulated at each other, holding up different numbers of fingers, shaking their heads yes and no. Then they ran up and down the stairs to show the flux of different markets. Then the final bell rang and all the dancers ran up to the top of the stairs, except for one who feigned a stumble. Then in reference (I think) to the sexual harassment cases against major trading firms, the dancer who stumbled was forced to dance while all the other dancers watched, hooting and cat-calling. It was a really surreal scene in itself, but the extra security in the financial district made it even stranger. It was another one of those America in a Nutshell moments. Officers in full body armor watching women worship the market gods in the holy citadel of capitalism.

The pictures that I could get (my battery ran out) are up at:

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/newyorkgiscardgames/index.htm

Chinatown and Photography

2004-08-03T14:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I got to Chinatown in NYC. It wasn't as big as I had hoped, but it still gave me that warm, familiar chinatown feel. There was still not a chasiubao that could stand up to the Golden Gate Bakery Buns. I rated a few places and put the ratings up on the picture page listed below.

I've rediscovered my love of photography. It has something to do with my time in film school and being in such an exciting and novel place. There's always some moment occuring around me that seems unique and individual enough that it demands to be recorded. I've been playing around with some Walker Evans style candid city life shots and some macro texture shots. None of it's too original, but it's still fun.

The pictures from Chinatown and Maria and Sarah's Wedding are up at:

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/NY/index.htm

Maria and Sarah's wedding

2004-08-03T13:07:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay, it's been busy lately.

I finished editing my final film which, considering that it is only some b-roll and narrative, is still independent local cable station ready.

Then we went to Maria and Sarah's wedding. It was a great time. Our hotel room was so comfortable or I was just extra tired from quitting caffeine. I found that I was getting back to college levels of diet coke abuse trying to keep up with having fun and school. After a night of insomnia, I decided to cut out caffeine. It was so much fun hanging out with everyone at the wedding that it took care of my caffeine withdrawal headache.

The ceremony was very sweet. Sarah's parents are the pastors of their Baptist church so they ran the ceremony. There was a point as Sarah's father was telling them to repeat their vows, where he got all choked up and had to pause for a moment. Oberlin was the most liberal small town I've ever been to. It was like a smaller, quainter, less consumer, more humid version of the bay area. There are hippies, but they all seem to have a higher time v. money ratio for their utility function than the consumer hippies of San Francisco and Berkeley.

The bachelor party was fun. The only thing was that both Sarah and Maria were there, so I felt like I had to hold back on what I said about Maria. I think it's more fun when each persons friend's can take them somewhere, without their significant other, and really rip into them. It was even harder to tell any stories after Sarah's grade school friends shared grade school stories about her. I couldn't jump from a G-Rated story about Sarah to an R-Rated story about Maria. Finally Sarah''s friend Kramer raised the stakes with a college sex story, opening up the door for at least one of my stories about Maria.

There was some real heavy rain throughout the weekend, but it cleared up just for their ceremony and most of their reception. The reception food was delicious. There was this funky feta-cheese and watermelon salad. Which I thought was OK, but that a lot of other people seemed to really like. I respected the bold culinary clash of fruit and sharp cheese, but I didn't think that the combination elevated the combined ingredients to any higher plane. We snuck out of the reception to mess up Sarah's car before the couple left, but it took Shannon, Catherine and I too long to get back and Sarah's friends had already painted up her car, filled it with balloons and took it to the next level by giving it a flat tire on the way from the church to the reception. Right as the flat was discovered, the heavens opened up for a real deluge. Kramer and others took lead on changing the tire. All the while, the pink writing on the black car was running, making the whole car look like a pile of melting raspberry and strawberry sorbet. Then after the car was jacked up and the bolts were off, the tire refused to budge. It seemed rusted on. Maria's friend from gradeschool in Texas came and finally budged the tire off. In between trying to help remove the tire, I managed to catch a few pictures of the whole affair.

After the ceremony, the Caltech crew came back to our hotel in Cleveland. Shannon, his girlfriend Maria, Kim, Catherine, Rob and his girlfriend Margie were all there. It's really eerie to see one of those life-alarms going off all around you. Makes me more concerned about the warnings all my 30 year old friends are giving me about the whole child rearing phase.

At the end of the weekend we all talked about the possibility of getting together to do some wine tasting.

Paul Mooney Live

2004-07-26T19:54:00.000-04:00

Lexi's sister Amy came to visit from the 21st to the 26th. So we all kicked our vacation into high gear. In the past few days we've seen Fiddler on the Roof, The Producers and Paul Mooney Live. We've visited the World Trade Center site, Grand Central, Central Park (on foot, bike and horse drawn carriage), Battery Park, The Empire State Building and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We've eaten at more than a dozen restaurants that even Lexi and I haven't visited yet. All in all I think we had a great time, considering that we had to put up with some thunderstorms.

It's a little hard to process everything and I even skipped editing today to relax after all that activity. These last few days have shown me that there are some huge discrepancies in how hard it is to do some of the touristy things in NY. Visiting the WTC site: free, quick and easy. Visiting the Empire State Building's observation deck: a 2 hour wait on a Monday afternoon with exorbitant ticket fees. Horse Drawn Carriage ride: $50 and there's always one around the south end of the park. Broadway shows: varies. We bought Fiddler tickets 4 hours before showtime with no trouble. However the Lion King had a 3 week wait for any reasonably priced seats.

One experience I definitely suggest is to see a movie at the AMC 25 in Time Square. It's a huge glass building and you can chill on the top floor of the theater, soaking in time square for the cost of a movie ticket. They even have the new ticket dispensers that let you buy a ticket by credit card without waiting in line. Given Manhattan prices and the lack of soda refills, it's pretty cost effective to chill with a huge diet coke on the top floor and just watch the pageant of tourists, street vendors and natives all flow by.

Gotta go to dinner. I'll write more about the shows and such later.

Photos

2004-07-19T19:17:00.000-04:00

http://www.seq.org/~acasteel/NY/index.htm

Assassins

2004-07-18T12:41:00.000-04:00

We managed to get tickets to the next to the-next to the-last performance of Assassins. I was greatly amused to hear that it was first performed in 92 when the first Bush was elected and was recently revived in the past couple of years (hmmmm.....). It's a great dark comedy and indictment of social inequities. They focus on the sad lives the assasins lead before killing or trying to kill the president. It's very much about the dark side of the American dream. I swear some liberal millionaire must have decided to fund the revival of this play just to spite Bush Jr.

Got to go get lunch,

Bye

Peculier Pub

2004-07-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

Tonight I rediscovered beer. Beer was one of the first things to go when I started a diet nine months ago - it's hard to fit good beer into a low-calorie diet. I mean, sometimes I'll have one beer on a special occasion (promotions, weddings, Barry Bonds's 666 home run) but I haven't been out drinking since October. But tonight some friends took us to Peculier Pub (145 Bleecker St.). Peculier Pub claims to have over 300 beers available. Now, I generally expect an average bar to have some beers I like, and a good bar to have some beers I've never tried. But Peculier Pub has beers from countries I've never heard of. I took a random walk through the menu and was really happy with the results.

During the school year, it's probably overrun with NYU students. But it was not too crowded this time, the bartenders had time to give suggestions, and the music was quiet enough to have a conversation. It reminded me of my favorite bar in Pasadena, Lucky Baldwin's. Lucky's had a few dozen beers on tap on any given night, but rotated semi-randomly through a much larger selection. As college seniors, it was our goal to try every beer available at Lucky's; according to our written records (crayon-marked beer menus), we got through maybe a third of it. Anyway, both places had a similar vibe - the best way to describe it is the sort of place where you wouldn't be kicked out for standing on a table and chugging a Guinness while yelling The Philosophers' Song.

Upright Citizens Brigade

2004-07-14T23:14:00.000-04:00

Tonight we went to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (24th st at 8th ave) to see some improv comedy. They do different shows every night - some nights the improv students do shows, some nights are open mic, and other night are more.. professional? The show was random and pretty funny. For $5, it's one of the best entertainment bargains out there. (I'd recommend this over the Ha Comedy Club, which we visited on Sunday - some of the sets of standup were okay, but the evening was marred slightly by the host mistaking me for a man, and saying that with my fashion sense I was likely to be kidnapped by five gay guys in a van.)

On the way there, we stopped at Tono Sushi (174 7th ave). This was reasonably good, cheap, and fast, and I'd definitely go back. We've been on a random walk of sushi restaurants in the neighborhood, and I still haven't found any place like my favorite 'good' sushi bar back in California (where you're allowed to sit at the sushi bar as long as you want, and the sushi guy hooks us up with free stuff when he's bored) or my favorite 'cheap' sushi bar in California (where all the rolls are $1 during happy hour, 5-7 on Tuesdays). Most of the sushi around here seems fine - it's not cheap (but nothing in Manhattan is, so that's expected), but the quality is generally good, there's usually reasonable variety, and they're always open late. Monster Sushi (158 W 23rd) has some interesting (and huge) rolls and a variety of sakes. I'm sure I went to Hana Sushi (211 7th ave, near 22nd), but I don't remember anything about it. The one on the corner of 7th and 20th (Meritake?) had good food but not so good service. We went to Sushi Sen-nin (49 E34th, near Madison Ave) once - it's a more high-end experience, both much more expensive and much better food than anywhere else. (The Crazy Dragon roll is astonishing - we'll upload pictures.) The advantage the Manhattan sushi restaurants have is that you can get sushi at nearly any hour of the night, even delivered.

For comparison, on my way to New York last month, I stopped for a night in Salt Lake City, Utah. There are, in fact, at least four sushi restaurants in the greater Salt Lake area. (In a turn of events I would not have predicted, there are now more bars than sushi restaurants there.) I walked all the way across town to find one (don't even ask about the public transit...) to discover that they're only sort of open sometimes, but never for lunch and not at all on the day I happened to be there.

Yankee Stadium

2004-07-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

We went to see the Yankees play the Devil Rays today. I learned from my previous experience to take an express train this time. The express train didn't make up for the hour late we slept in, so we got to the game late, and the only seats left were the $10 bleacher seats. Now, I don't have a problem with cheapie bleacher seats, but Yankee Stadium is huge - the view from the bleachers is pretty bad to begin with, plus with people standing in the aisles to get a better view it's almost impossible to see anything. The bleachers are also out in the open, so we were both sunburned pretty quickly. This must be the advantage of buying the $20 nosebleed seats - the view is just as bad, but at least there's shade. Squinting at the seating chart suggests that you have to spend upwards of $50 to get a good view of the game. Yankee Stadium (err... Con Edison Stadium) is also one of those parks where everything is really expensive and there's lots of stupid rules, like you can't bring in backpacks. Hint to stadium owners: If I wanted to blow up your stupid ballpark, I would hollow out my six-inch clogs, fill them with plastic explosives, put the trigger in my pocket, and walk right in (because no guy security guard is ever going to search a girl, much less question what's in the shoes), leave the bomb in the restroom, and detonate it from a few blocks away. Really, it's not rocket science. The only real impact of the no-backpack rule is that I can't bring in sunscreen and a newspaper, so now I'm sunburned. Other ballparks settle for searching your pack on the way in, which works out fine for me - I'm not trying to smuggle food in or anything.

At least the Yankees won. It was an exciting game, although I probably would have gotten a better view from a wireless unit and ESPN.

Sunstroke Film Festival

2004-07-11T21:23:00.000-04:00

Damn my bog-dwelling ancestors. I was filming all of Friday, and 5 hours on Saturday and then tried to watch the Sunday Yankees game from the bleacher seats today and it only took 2 hours of sun to run me down. I spent the rest of the day feeling like crap. I wanted to get out and rollerblade or go to the gym, but I guess this is my body's way of telling me to slow down. I have been missing too much sleep this week and I should store it up if I can.

This week besides going to class, I got to watch Rent and Bridges and Tunnels. Rent was OK. I prefer my musicals to be more comical and less tragic. There were all these tragic bohemians. For example, Jai from Queer Eye played a free spirited cross dresser who spends the first act joking around and perking up everyones spirits. Then in the second act we have to watch him die of AIDS. It had too much of that defeatist, Gen-X, "The Whole World is Corrupt but I'd rather hide from it than make the compromises required to fix it". Throughout the movie, the characters hid from themselves, their families and the world. One of the final triumphant moments is when the filmmaker in the play turns down the offer to work in Hollywood so he doesn't "sell out". His character believes in a lot of truly positive ideals, many of which I share. I wanted him to accept the offer. Make some films more people will see and slowly but surely work his ideals into his films. I hate that the play celebrated the lack of patience and the cowardice of his decision. It diminishes the contributioons made by those who are willing to make the compromises required to create real change from within the system.

Sarah Jones' Bridges and Tunnels was great. I wonder what Samm would think about the play. He hates Dave Chapelles style of self-depricating racial humor, but I wonder what he would make of Sarah Jones' racial humor. As the racial differences she chose to joke about are less negative, he may be more approving even though he claims that all racial humor is wrong.

Saturday started with a 5 hour shoot. For 3 hours, I helped my friend Alina shoot interviews for her documentary on happiness. I thought that it was unlikely that people would be willing to stop for 5 minutes a piece in the hot sun to answer questions and then stand still for 10 seconds, however Alina and her friend have a much greater ability than I to draw people into such things. After we concluded her shoot at Union Square, we took the subway down to Battery Park to interview 3 Polish Girls who were paying for their trip around the world by working as street musicians. I had been worrying all week about what to do for my documentary when I saw these 3 girls playing at Union Square with a sign that said "Help us pay for our trip around the world". I made arrangements to meet up with them on Saturday and have them tell their story. It turned out to be a little different from what I expected, but it was still a great story of brash youthful adventure. I got a great 30 minute interview from 2 camera angles and 20 minutes of b-roll of them playing while people watched. More importantly, it gave me the inspiration to create the Academy documentary part 1 for my final project. I hope to get a well lit interview with Jack when he is out here and splice it together with some interviews of my own and the footage we recorded at Sequoia. I'd been worrying about my final film for quite some time as I didn't really have a great inspiration for a narrative film. Once I was able to let go of the narrative format and give myself the chance to pursue a project I've been thinking about for a long time, it was like a huge weight being lifted. Creativity is hard. It's much harder than organizing and arranging, which are my strengths.

That's all the brain spew for tonight,

Good Night All

Limericks of Mass Destruction

2004-07-09T22:41:00.000-04:00

When Andrew got tickets for us to see Sarah Jones do a one-woman play, I was a little reluctant. See, I thought it was going to be, like, one of those new age poetry readings (like the bit in Rent where they start mooing), something his film school buddies recommended. But, I figured, everything is worth trying once. (Except for broccoli.) So we went to 45 Bleecker Theater for the Friday night show of "Bridge and Tunnel". It was nothing like what I expected - I was completely blown away by the performance. She does dozens of different characters, switching back and forth between guises at the drop of a hat. She has a really instinctive understanding of the backgrounds of each one - each seemed like it was effortless, not like a performance. The poetry read by each individual character was pretty neat - some was funny, some was serious, all of it was well written. But the one by the young Vietnamese character just reached out and grabbed me - the style and the rhythm felt right, as if all other forms of verbal expression were just shadows of what is possible. It was the first poetry slam I had ever heard, and as I listened to it, it made me really want to write poetry like that too. I mean, I'm not going to quit my day job and move to the village and turn all bohemain, but it's been a while since something new called to me like that.

Anyway, this post is called "limericks of mass destruction" because that's my favorite line from the performance - the main character is warned that the government might investigate his gathering of immigrants reading poetry, and he responds, "what are they expecting to find - limericks of mass destruction?" So, in that spirit, I have one:

The UN once got an injunction
Barring Iraqi weapons production
But what did Bush see
In each bombed city?
Just limericks of massive destruction.

One film down.

2004-07-06T23:49:00.000-04:00

Today I edited my first film. I was a little nervous about working in Final Cut Pro as I had so much trouble trying to work with Adobe Premiere. Final Cut Pro feels like iMovie+. It's so intuitive that I was able to finish editing my movie 3 hours ahead of schedule. I'll get a link to it up as soon as I get my DVD player out here.

It's been great to put all my energy into film again. I even find myself getting back into photography. I'm collecting pictures of all the anti-Bush graffiti I can find. I've put some of the pictures I've taken on-line at www.bixel.org/pictures/

Fortunately (and unfortunately) my school is located in the middle of a bunch of the best restaurants in town and they are all still offering cheap prix fixe meals for lunch. I've been torn between hanging with my film school friends and sneaking off to eat at some of the nice restaurants. Today, the cuisine got the better of me and I had some great gazpacho, steak fritte and a peach napoleon for lunch at Steak Fritte. Together it was just $20. Lexi promised that she would sneak off one day and join me for lunch one of these days. Maybe next Thursday.

We've got more shows lined up for this week. Thursday we're off to see Jai from Queer Eye in Rent. Then on Friday we're seeing Sarah Jones one woman show "Bridge and Tunnel".

Well it's getting late. Good Night.

Control Room

2004-07-05T23:37:00.000-04:00

Ugh... I was so hung over today... judging from the state of the living room, we polished off a bottle of champagne, a bottle of wine, and most of a bottle of Old Rip Van Winkle.. and that's just after we got home. From my previous post, I infer that I also drank beer (possibly in large quantities).

After stumbling out of bed into an awfully bright, warm, and humid day, it became obvious that the afternoon would be best spent indoors in the air conditioning, preferably one without direct sunlight. We went to go see Control Room, a documentary about the media coverage of the Iraq war. It provided an Arab perspective that I hadn't really heard before. The movie is really pro-Al-Jazeera, although it's honest about that bias. It showed a lot of context that cast US actions in a different light than the original western media coverage implied. Like, when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled. video taken from a wider perspective shows that the square was empty except for the small group of men taking down the statue - regular Iraqi people were too afraid to come out of their houses to watch, so the only people cheering them on were US soldiers.

Their footage of the US military hostages was especially striking. At some point before the tanks rolled into Baghdad, Bush had given a speech where he had said something along the lines of that we were going to find the terrorists or insurgents or whoever and bring them to justice, and that no individual Iraqi would be able to stand behind the defense of 'just following orders'. In the footage of the hostages, the captor asks each in turn why he is in Iraq. Each soldier says "I was just following orders". This doesn't imply that I think the soldiers are doing anything wrong, or that they should have some other answer - I think they are just following orders, and somebody higher up the chain is ultimately responsible for the actions of the military as whole - but I thought the counterpoint was food for thought.

I'm not sure what I think about Al Jazeera. I should probably watch some of their actual broadcasts before forming an opinion about them. But they showed real consequences to the war even when the US told them not to, and I figure that's probably a good step forward for journalism in the middle east.

July 4

2004-07-04T23:13:00.000-04:00

It's July 4, and we've worked through several bottles of alcoholic substances. (The "Three Philosophers" Belgian beer was excellent - I think we found it at the grocery store on 8th near 23rd.) I am drunk enough that iambic tetrameter seems like a fine transport mechanism for tonight's entry.

I stood on the apartment roof
And watched the world implode in light
Some drunken Irish serenade
As I absorb the sounds of night

Some helicopters fly above
I wonder if they see us there
Or, if we are just ants to them
Up in the sky without a care

The sound rips through the ashen sky
It fills me with a sense of pride
As fireworks of red white and blue
Illuminate the riverside

It reminds me that I'm lucky
To celebrate with friends and beer
So even if we're still at war
At least the bombs aren't falling here.

Avenue Q

2004-07-03T00:06:00.000-04:00

We went to see Avenue Q tonight. It was hilarious! I am firmly convinced that puppets make everything funnier. (The puppet episode of Angel is one of my favorites.) Avenue Q is about puppets trying to find their purpose in life. One is a recent college graduate with a degree in English with no job prospects; another is a closeted gay Republican investment banker. There are puppet sex scenes and songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist". There's even a whole song about schaudenfreude. It's definitely one of my favorite musicals so far.

Afterwards, we went to Ben Benson's Steak House for dinner (123 W 52nd, between 6th and 7th). The prime rib steak was one of the best steaks I've ever eaten, and was big enough to take home half for later. The decor is really old-school and classy. It's pricey, but worth it.

One film down, 3 to go this weekend

2004-07-02T18:48:00.000-04:00

Today we finished our first two continuity films. I got to play the absent minded professor in Boyette's movie. It only took us 3 hours to shoot that scene. We've still got 3 movies to shoot this weekend so Saturday morning/afternoon and Sunday morning are shot.

Still I'll have a chance to hang with my east coast friends tomorrow and have a nice picnic Sunday night (hopefully).

It's hard to fit in all the fun with all the work. Last night I was out rollerblading for two hours with Lexi after a full day of class. We met a roller-dancer named Greg who gave us some free rollerblading lessons. The portrayal of New York as a rude city is definitely unwarranted. We've found most people on the street to be much more outgoing than many of the people we meet in California. I think it has to do with the very compact nature of the city. In San Francisco, more people drive or take the train than walk. You are usually on your way to a get together, which requires you to drive/bike or take the train. As such, you don't have as much opportunity to mingle with everyone else on the street. It's a refreshing change to have so many people walking around outside their personal bubbles.

It's off to Avenue Q. So long

Marathon Manhattan Film School

2004-06-30T23:04:00.000-04:00

Holy Shit! I didn't expect film school to be this intense. I suspected that it would be 9-6 each day with no homework. It's turned out to be 9-6-occasionally-9 and I have to give up a day and a half this weekend to do a continuity film project. I'm learning a lot, but I wanted to have more time to have fun. I'm trying to work my personal schedule around my film school duties, but it is going to be difficult. On the bright side, I like all of my classmates and I've been having a great time with them, when we aren't exhausted. Rob, Maria and Sarah are dropping by this Saturday and I hope that I can get away from filming long enough to hang with them.

I've decided not to pay the overinflated gym prices and just rely on walking and other exercise this summer as I've had hardly any time outside of school and painting the town red with Lexi. We went to Hairspray yesterday, which was a blast. I love live theater because the show can change and respond to current events. The actors were joking about the possible broadway strike and about how Bush stole the election in 2000.

Gotta go to get enough sleep for tomorrow.

Bye

Frick Collection

2004-06-28T00:02:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, I went to the Frick Collection (1 E70th Street, near the park). It's this gorgeous old mansion where Henry Clay Frick put his personal art collection. Every available surface is covered with art, plus there are free-standing statues. It's smaller than a regular museum - it was house, if a big one - but all the art is good. You know how sometimes you go to some museums and there's a whole room with nothing in it but a toilet and a sign declaring that it (the toilet, not the sign) is Meaningful Art? There's none of that here. Henry Clay Frick had good taste. (Or, possibly, 'modern art' meant something different in 1900.) They said that almost half the stuff is from his original collection - the directors don't replace pieces often.

One of the unique things about this collection is that it's mostly "happy" art, like it would be pleasant to have hanging over your dinner table. (My dad once bought a painting depicting a battle scene that somehow involved bleeding horses, and insisted on putting it in the dining room. Eating steak became much more difficult with the painting there. Eventually my mother relegated the painting to the basement.) One room has a lot of landscapes and portraits of very serious people - but in the middle of that is Jean-Baptiste Greuze's "The Wool Winder", which is of a girl trying to wind up a ball of yarn, except a kitten is tugging on the loose ends. That's my favorite. The kitten looks so playful, and there's a remarkable amount of detail that brings the painting to life.

There's also a self-portrait by Rembrandt. And that got me thinking - how did artists do self portraits back then? Did they even have mirrors in the 1600s? I guess they probably did. But still, it seems hard to hold a pose and paint it at the same time. So maybe he was guessing about what he looked like, or painting the picture to be the way he wanted to look.

Some of the artists did really clever things with light. In The Education of the Virgin, the candlelight casts sharp light on one subject but a softer, diffused light on the other subject. But it all looks really accurate - better than 3D rendering programs do today.

My favorite portrait is the one of Thomas More. In most portraits, the person is usually looking off into space sort of blankly, or maybe smiling. In this one, Thomas More has this profound look of resignation, like there's a really good baseball game on but somebody has told him he has to sit right there until the painting is finished, and he's tried very hard to argue his way out of it, but finally given up.

This is a fabulous collection all around, and the century-old mansion is a great comfy setting for it.

Straight to TV

2004-06-27T23:58:00.000-04:00

Hello, this is Andrew on Lexi's account (blogger's slow to email me my access to this blog). For a first day in New York, today was not bad at all. After a nice brunch as Nisos (176 8th Ave.), which serves up a lot of new age diner cuisine (club sandwiches with brie and the like), we did some shopping for a pair of rollerblades for me. My first attempt to skate was cut short as we could not get to the park because of the gay pride parade. Undaunted, we decided to get some tickets to Fahrenheit 9/11 and then find a new park to practice. It just happened that Michael Moore was giving an interview at the theater right then. I couldn't get a great picture of him, but I did get interviewed by NY1 and was shown on the nightly news giving an excellent elocution of a rather bland sound bite. Though we arrived at the theater a little after 3pm, we couldn't get tickets for anything earlier than the 8:15 showing, which isn't surprising now that we found out it made box office records as the first documentary to outgross its competitors on opening weekend.

With the 4 hours we had before our showing, Lexi did her best to help me get the hang of rollerblading. I fell twice. Managed not to run into anyone. And somehow got a bruise on the arm that I didn't land on? It's like the right and left sides of my body have that same thing the Crimson Twins from GI-Joe had going on. Apparently I can hit a pole at full speed with my right arm and get a nice purple bruise on my left. It's quite disconcerting

After two hours of practice, we stopped for dinner at Cosi (841 Broadway), which specializes in artisan bread sandwiches. It was a restaurant that most closely resembled my dream restaurant. Those who have had the dubious pleasure of dining with me have probably noticed my propensity for eating the crust off enough bread that I can't eat the actual meal I've ordered. This place serves a bread that's mostly golden, crispy and slightly seasoned crust along with something else so that you have something to put on it. For all you other epicrusteans out there, it's a do-not-miss dining experience. It's cheap and casual so it would make a great lunch spot.

Everyone should see the film, regardless of how liberal/conservative you are. Michael Moore may be a liberal propagandist, but he is a damn good one. Out of all the film tries to accomplish, I think it is most effective at personalizing the war against Iraq. No matter how many paper trails you dig up that prove Bush is a greedy, lying puppet of industry, nothing will convince people of the barbarity of his acts like footage of an iraqi child crying as they stitch his scalp back on or a burnt American corpse being beaten and then hung up by an angry mob. Now we're home. I'm slightly sunburnt and absolutely exhausted from 2 hours of rollerblading practice. Lexi's slightly tired from waiting for me to catch up to her every half block and not at all sunburnt. And we're both trying to get to bed early so we can start work/school tomorrow. Which is still hard for me as Cali time has yet to loosen its grip on my biorhythms.

Good Night,

Andrew

Marijuana-logues

2004-06-27T00:20:00.000-04:00

My husband Andrew has joined me in New York, now that he's done teaching for the year. He'll be posting too. Everybody say hi to Andrew. :)

We went to Greenwich Village to try a sushi restaurant recommended by some friends. Sushi Samba (87 7th Ave South, near Barrow) is sort of what you'd expect, for a sushi restaurant that has a website that plays music. The cuisine is Japanese/Brasilian fusion, which means that you can get mango on your sushi or tuna in your ceviche. (Mango-eel-avacado sushi turns out to be pretty good.) So there's a lot of variety on the menu, the atmosphere is good, and the food is tasty - but it's definitely more expensive than regular sushi.

This restaurant did give me my first-ever experience of looking at a wine list and recognizing something I had previously tried at the brewery where it is made. Hakusan Plum Sake is a sweet, mellow sort of fruity sake. The Hakusan Sake Garden, where it is made, is in Napa and happens to open for sake tasting at 9 a.m. - an hour before any other wineries in the area open for tasting, which is why I have tried it. It comes in the big bottles (750ml), not the little bottles, so our valiant attempts to finish the bottle tonight were thwarted by a lack of coordination needed to pour the last of the bottle into the sake glasses.

Across the street from Sushi Samba is the Actor's Playhouse, whose current feature is The Marijuana-logues. We'd seen them do a segment on Real Time with Bill Maher, and figured it would be pretty funny. It's a great live show - they improvise some, and there are some really good bits. My favorite went something like this: "People say the body is a temple. Well, I'm not religious - so if my body is a temple, it's empty, and I rent it out to demons to have wild parties."

Golden Chicken, Ribs, and Steak

2004-06-24T22:49:00.000-04:00

Golden Chicken, Ribs, and Steak has cheap and tasty chicken and ribs (and, I assume, steak - but I haven't tried that yet). It's at 604 9th ave (near W43rd). $5 buys you a huge sandwich plus a side, or a quarter-rack of ribs plus a side. You can watch a hundred chickens cooking on their grill while you wait; the chicken sandwich was full of moist, flavorful chicken (I'm too used to dried-out overdone fast food, I think.) This could be addicting - the menu is long and varied. While I've been trying not to eat at the same place more than once (to ensure that I sample as many different restaurants as possible), this is one place I'll be going back to.

Speaking of places to go back to, I pass the Breadstix Cafe (254 8th ave, at W23rd) most days on my way to work. I have discovered that I'm a complete sucker for freshly-baked cookies - every time I walk past, I smell something new and have to go in and try it. Yesterday I discovered the magic of the black and white cookie - they're big soft poofy cookies with two kinds of icing. Unfortunately for my diet, there appear to be dozens of different kinds of cookies in this bakery. At least there's a gym across the street.

Rent

2004-06-22T22:36:00.000-04:00

If you physically show up at the Nederlander Theater (W41st near 7th) on Sunday, you can buy half-price tickets for Rent for upcoming weekday performances.

(I think the ads at the top of this page - for stuffed antelopes - are absolutely hilarious. Go, AdSense!)

Bryant Park Summer Film Festival

2004-06-21T22:20:00.000-04:00

There are free movies in Bryant Park (on 40th between 5th and 6th - 42nd/Bryant Park station) on Monday evenings in the summer. This week's movie was American Graffiti. Boy, Harrison Ford must be old now if he was young then. I acquired a tasty roast beef sandwich at the Pea Soup Deli (on 5th near 39th) and picnicked in the park.

Shea Stadium

2004-06-20T21:38:00.000-04:00

I woke up on Sunday with a sudden desire to watch a baseball game, so I hopped on the subway and went to a Mets game. First, I'd like to point out that the subway map implies that Flushing is only a couple of miles away from midtown Manhattan, just a short subway hop away, when in fact it is, like ten miles away, and the one subway line that goes out there makes absolutely every stop possible, occasionally stopping the middle of the tracks just for fun. Now I know there is theoretically an express on the 7 line, but I have yet to see proof of its existence. (There was construction this weekend, so waybe this was just bad timing.) It took most of an hour to get there. Fortunately, I had my trusty Sunday New York Times with me - I was able to read most of it, round trip.

Shea Stadium is a pretty good ballpark. Unlike some ballparks, where the third deck goes all the way around the field and the cheap seats are a mile up and in the outfield, Shea's third deck goes only from foul pole to foul pole - so the cheap seats are mostly a mile up and in the infield. On my first visit to a new ballpark, I usually get the second-cheapest kind of seat - the very cheapest are really hit-or-miss, and the more expensive ones are usually a lot more expensive and not much better. Here, the $23 seats had a decent view - I was almost directly behind home plate, waaay above it. Shea also has a distinctive lack of blinky things and blaring pop music, making it much easier to watch the game.

This was the first time I've seen the Mets play in person. When I moved to California, I became a Giants fan, but long before that, my first love was the Mets. I remember in 1986 (as a little kid) being glued to the television set, holding up the bunny ears with tinfoil wrapped around them just so to get reception, watching the World Series. I was certain that when I grew up, I was going to be just like Darryl Strawberry, and play for the Mets. My hopes were dashed when it was pointed out to me that they don't let girls play professional baseball; shortly after that, I discovered computers and never looked back. But it was cool to get to see them.

First Post

2004-06-20T01:38:00.000-04:00

I started this blog because I wanted somewhere to write down the locations of interesting things, and I keep losing my pile of receipts that formerly held this information. I'm a native Californian, but I'm working and living in Manhattan this summer. It's my first visit to New York ever (notwithstanding a brief tourist jaunt with my parents when I was ten, which does not count), so everything is new.

I figured living in New York would be different from living near San Francisco. I prepared by watching lots of Law and Order (the good ones, not the new ones). I knew that nobody drives a car because there's too much traffic. I knew that life in an urban apartment would be louder, and stuff would be happening all the time. I left my car in San Francisco and acquired a pair of inline skates.

But it's not the big differences (functioning public transit, readily available non-fast-food at 3 a.m., humidity) that I noticed first - it's the little ones. Like, the New York Times has different sections if you get the late New York edition instead of the California edition. There's a Metro section with weather and TV schedules and ads for local businesses (like the one where a bunch of good restaurants offer cheapie prix fixe lunches for a few weeks). There's no half-assed attempt to include items of interest to Northern Californians. The Saturday paper has an enormous Arts and Leisure section with event listings. (The Saturday California edition is tiny by comparison.)

Oh, wait, I said I was going to write down the location of something interesting. OK. Today I went to the American Museum of Natural History in the morning/afternoon (Central Park West at 79th, has its own subway station at 81st on the A-C-E line). There were frogs. Lots of frogs. And these huge dioramas of animals in their native habitats. I've never seen whole stuffed animals before - it was really neat. Did you know there's more than one kind of antelope? To the extent that I had ever thought about it (not much), I'd figured antelopes were all basically the same. But there are dozens of different species of antelopes just in Africa. They all appear antelope-like, but they have different numbers of horns or stripes or polka dots (wait, no, those were deer).

After a stop at Macy's (6th ave at W34th, Herald Square) to pick up an outfit that did not involve blue jeans, I went to see Stomp at the Orpheum (126 2nd Ave, near 8th - I left the subway at 14th and 3rd on the L line because I wanted to walk; there is a closer station). In an odd coincidence, there is also an Orpheum theater in San Francisco - I saw the Lion King there on June 3. Anyway, the Orpheum here is a pretty small theater but the acoustics seemed good. Stomp is all about celebrating the sheer fun of making noise with things that are not supposed to be noisy. (Come on, I'm not the only one who saw this and remembered my eight-year-old self pulling all the pots and pans out of the cupboard and banging on them with chopsticks, right?) The show was tons of fun.