Triscribe

Month: December 2006

  • New Year’s Eve

    Friday night – siblings and I went to see the Holiday Lights at the Bronx Zoo (thanks in part to two complimentary tickets courtesy of the Daily News Sweepstakes that I entered – so cool to have won something, even if it is one of those random drawings!). The lights were very nice stuff. The music playing in the speakers had weird stuff – a sort-of jazzy/R&B version of the Rudolph son, an extremely hard-to-recognize version of Mariah Carey’s Christmas song sung by a male singer, and a not-very-good version of Jingle Bell Rock. Weird to visit the zoo at night; although it was nice to visit the zoo at all, since I hadn’t done it in years. The animals in the zoo didn’t seem to care to see people – one tiger sat with his(her?) back to the protective window barriers; the snakes and turtles all seemed asleep. The camels certainly seemed happy to see people, posing just so perfectly; but they (or the neighboring boar) were smelly. Oh, well. A nice holiday thing.

    Some notable newspaper reading:
    NY Times reports on the re-opening of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. The pictures from the accompanying slide show on the Times’ website looks nice.

    Awhile back, I watched this Nova episode about dogs on PBS, where the evolution of dogs and why we love them were nicely explained – and the episode didn’t hold back on the perils of dog-breeding and how in-breeding can be perilous if the goal is to produce the purebreed but not done safely. The Times had this sad article on how the excessive dog inbreeding in Japan is problematic. Sure the tiny chihuahua with blue eyes is adorable; but apparently, his siblings may have died because they were hideously deformed. It gets nuts, and then one wonders – do you want to extrapolate as to what kind of values your country has by allowing this to happen:

    Rare dogs are highly prized here, and can set buyers back more than $10,000. But the real problem is what often arrives in the same litter: genetically defective sister and brother puppies born with missing paws or faces lacking eyes and a nose.

    There have been dogs with brain disorders so severe that they spent all day running in circles, and others with bones so frail they dissolved in their bodies. Many carry hidden diseases that crop up years later, veterinarians and breeders say.

    Kiyomi Miyauchi was heartbroken to discover this after one of two Boston terriers she bought years ago suddenly collapsed last year into spasms on the living room floor and died. In March, one of its puppies died the same way; another went blind.

    Ms. Miyauchi stumbled across a widespread problem here that is only starting to get attention. Rampant inbreeding has given Japanese dogs some of the highest rates of genetic defects in the world, sometimes four times higher than in the United States and Europe.

    These illnesses are the tragic consequences of the national penchant in Japan for turning things cute and cuddly into social status symbols. But they also reflect the fondness for piling onto fads in Japan, a nation that always seems caught in the grip of some trend or other.

    “Japanese are maniacs for booms,” said Toshiaki Kageyama, a professor of veterinary medicine specializing in genetic defects at Azabu University in Sagamihara. “But people forget here that dogs aren’t just status symbols. They are living things.”

    Dogs are just one current rage. [….]

    The affection for fads in Japan reflects its group-oriented culture, a product of the conformity taught in its grueling education system. But booms also take off because they are fueled by big business. Companies like Sony and Nintendo are constantly looking to create the next adorable hit, churning out cute new characters and devices. Booms help sustain an entire industrial complex, from software makers to marketers and distributors, that thrives off the pack mentality of consumers in Japan. [….]

    “The demand is intense, and so is the temptation,” said Hidekazu Kawanabe, one of the country’s top Chihuahua breeders. “There are a lot of bad breeders out there who see dogs as nothing more than an industrial product to make quick money.” [….]

    The Japan Kennel Club began adding results of DNA screening onto pedigree certificates in April. But that falls short of the American Kennel Club, which discourages risky inbreeding by listing acceptable colors for each breed.

    “Japan is about 30 or 40 years behind in dealing with genetic defects,” said Takemi Nagamura, president of the Japan Kennel Club.

    Ultimately, animal care professionals say, the solution is educating not just breeders but potential dog owners.

    “If consumers didn’t buy these unnatural dogs,” said Chizuko Yamaguchi, a veterinarian at the Japan Animal Welfare Society, “breeders wouldn’t breed them.”

    So, you want something rare and unique, but you go overboard in trying to get ahead of the neighbors and wind up with nothing better than theirs, if not worse. Sigh.

    NY Times’ Caryn James does a comparison of “Children of Men” the movie (starring Clive Owen) and “Children of Men” book that movie’s premise was derived (written by P.D. James, most famous for her Commander Dagliesh of Scotland Yard mystery series). I had read the book so long ago, and it’s very dark – so I have been wary about seeing the movie. Then again, it has a cool director and Clive Owen, so who knows if I do see it. But, I liked how Caryn James was able to respect both versions as worthy of each other as pieces of art that have their own integrity and commentary on the dark times we live in.

    Being a student of American history, and simply a presidential history buff, I watched the Ford funeral ceremonies on tv. The coverage has been a little weird – I feel sad for the Ford family, but the tv coverages push how we’re to celebrate a long and lovely life and, no less important, celebrate America. Or, maybe it’s not the fault of the tv anchors; my cynicism rises when I have to hear certain speakers make it seem like America and Ford were destined for great things (destiny? providence? it got to be a bit much to me). NY Times’ tv critic Alessandra Stanley put it like this: “Death is sad, at least in most cases. But the death of a former president has become an almost cheery television event.”

    In the midst of all the sadness and holiday cheer and the madness of our times, let’s wish for a happy New Year.

  • Soft Material

    Had dinner with my NYU circle of writer friends. One of them has a new book out, Your Career Is an Extreme Sport . She also writes for the WSJ – check it out.

    I wanted to get the book SSW mentioned, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, because that would be me. It wasn’t in Barnes & Noble yet, so for my winter reading I got What Every American Should Know About Europe. I really don’t know a whole lot about Europe, mostly because I took European History in high school with immersion Spanish. I was pretty good with American History, so I’m sort of OK past 1750 taking it from our point of view, but between the Dark Ages and the middle of the 18th century (or Siglio XVIII as it was called in Spanish), I never really had a good grasp of what was going on. Remedial history for me.

    After that dinner, we went out to the nearby Irish pub for a pint, and like a numnut, I left my camera and bag at the Indian restaurant. Today I spent a lot of time on the phone with one guy from the restaurant whose English is pretty much limited to food, and who after 3 phone calls tells me to call at 9:30 pm, I guess when his son shows up. Turns out that they had the bag the whole time, just he couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I make a mad dash back into the city to claim it back. It’s all in one piece, thankfully (P- won’t have to kill me too much).

    I was walking back through Times Square to get to the subway and I recall the Daily News mentioning that 1.25 million out-of-towners are here right now. It sure looks like it – check it out yourself:

    Invariably I needed to make a pit stop, and thankfully Charmin toilet tissue has rented out a place on Times Square to use the facilities for the holidays. They managed to make relief into a amusement ride. This is actually deluxe – 20 WC closets, a dozen attendants that sanitize the rooms between every use, and of course four rolls of tissue in each room. Over 390,000 people have used the facilities, including 2,000 people from Puerto Rico (that’s a village right there) and apparently 2 North Koreans. This is what the inner sanctum looks like:

    If you gotta go, you outta go here – they have to be the cleanest restrooms I’ve ever seen.

    New Years’ is in swing – they’re moving in the barricades, the lights and the concrete blocks. If it doesn’t rain it will probably be pretty warm. Not a bad day to stay out for 6 hours.

  • Really an island

    As you might know by now, the earthquakes in Taiwan have isolated the country.  Quite the fun.

     

    More laters,

  • Merry Third Day of Christmas!

    Xmas gifts included gift cards (always useful); DVD’s (of tv stuff I do watch – always a good good to give to a tv person); and some books (Al Gore’s book, the tie-in to the documentary – should be an interesting read).

    December reading included:

    “The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage” by ex-inspector general of the CIA Frederick Hitz, on the literary nature of books on spies and how the history of real spies is that much more crazy (or just plain more human in a dimwitted kind of way) than what LeCarre or Tom Clancy or even Ian Fleming may devise. An interesting read, consistent with my whole spy reading kick of late. The book kind of made me want to read more LeCarre, if nothing else; on the other hand, it also felt like the author was still dancing around the flaws of espionage (like, how can a democracy justify clandestine operations or acts of subterfuge that seem to undermine the very ideas of democracy, including – say – accountability?) – but, considering that the CIA had to clear the book – well, I was impressed by the candid tone and that someone with this Ivy-League-trained-lawyer/ex-spy bureaucrat’s credentials actually seems to enjoy reading spy fiction (of the LeCarre or Graham Greene variety, anyway; couldn’t tell if he cared for James Bond stuff at all).

    “The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to do What’s Right” by Thane Rosenbaum. A rather irritating read; he’s a law-and-literature professor at Fordham; he’s also a novelist. He writes very well, but he’s clearly bitter about having been a lawyer; having been through a bad experience with the legal system (bad divorce? Bad anything?); and so he goes on this tear over why can’t our legal system be “moral” (but doesn’t really define what is “moral” – maybe he means the Judeo-Christian Western culture sense of it?), with references to how the lawyers on tv or literature are so much more noble with their sense of justice and angst and devotion to “truth.” Rosenbaum didn’t exactly come up with solutions (no one’s saying the system’s perfect; morality is not the same as legality, as they taught us in law school; and I thought he’s a little nuts to suggest abolishing statutes of limitations), but I guess he’s trying to be provocative to get dialog in the legal profession. Oh, well. It’s a different kind of reading to have tried.
    “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. Very good reading on comparative mythology. A classic book that inspired Bill Moyers to interview Campbell and produce the series “Power of Myth” (which I’m currently reading). Campbell focused a bit much of psychoanalysis as a way to analyze myths (too much for my taste, anyway, even if he did have a point that psychoanalysis can be insightful), but his storytelling was superb.
    In time for the New Year: January is “Get Organized Month.” Interesting NY Times article by Penelope Green – messes may actually be ok. Considering that I’m a horrific clutter person, I find some sense of consolation in this. Quotes:

    “[….]But contrarian voices can be heard in the wilderness. An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

    “It’s chasing an illusion to think that any organization — be it a family unit or a corporation — can be completely rid of disorder on any consistent basis,” said Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives. “And if it could, should it be? Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life. I live in a world of total clutter, advising on cases where you’d think from all the paper it’s the F.B.I. files on the Unabomber,” when, in fact, he said, it’s only “a person with a stiff neck.” [….]

    Stop feeling bad, say the mess apologists. There are more urgent things to worry about. Irwin Kula is a rabbi based in Manhattan and author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” which was published by Hyperion in September. “Order can be profane and life-diminishing,” he said the other day. “It’s a flippant remark, but if you’ve never had a messy kitchen, you’ve probably never had a home-cooked meal. Real life is very messy, but we need to have models about how that messiness works.” [….]

    Last week David H. Freedman, another amiable mess analyst (and science journalist), stood bemused in front of the heathery tweed collapsible storage boxes with clear panels ($29.99) at the Container Store in Natick, Mass., and suggested that the main thing most people’s closets are brimming with is unused organizing equipment. “This is another wonderful trend,” Mr. Freedman said dryly, referring to the clear panels. “We’re going to lose the ability to put clutter away. Inside your storage box, you’d better be organized.”

    Mr. Freedman is co-author, with Eric Abrahamson, of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” out in two weeks from Little, Brown & Company. The book is a meandering, engaging tour of beneficial mess and the systems and individuals reaping those benefits, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose mess-for-success tips include never making a daily schedule.

    As a corollary, the book’s authors examine the high cost of neatness — measured in shame, mostly, and family fights, as well as wasted dollars — and generally have a fine time tipping over orthodoxies and poking fun at clutter busters and their ilk, and at the self-help tips they live or die by. They wonder: Why is it better to pack more activities into one day? By whose standards are procrastinators less effective than their well-scheduled peers? Why should children have to do chores to earn back their possessions if they leave them on the floor, as many professional organizers suggest?

    In their book Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson describe the properties of mess in loving terms. Mess has resonance, they write, which means it can vibrate beyond its own confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin, from a moldy bloom in a petri dish he had forgotten on his desk. [….]

    According to a small survey that Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson conducted for their book — 160 adults representing a cross section of genders, races and incomes, Mr. Freedman said — of those who had split up with a partner, one in 12 had done so over a struggle involving one partner’s idea of mess. Happy partnerships turn out not necessarily to be those in which products from Staples figure largely. Mr. Freedman and his wife, for example, have been married for over two decades, and live in an offhandedly messy house with a violently messy basement — the latter area, where their three children hang out, decorated (though that’s not quite the right word) in a pre-1990s Tompkins Square Park lean-to style.

    The room’s chaos is an example of one of Mr. Freedman and Mr. Abrahamson’s mess strategies, which is to create a mess-free DMZ (in this case, the basement stairs) and acknowledge areas of complementary mess. Cherish your mess management strategies, suggested Mr. Freedman, speaking approvingly of the pile builders and the under-the-bed stuffers; of those who let their messes wax and wane — the cyclers, he called them; and those who create satellite messes (in storage units off-site). “Most people don’t realize their own efficiency or effectiveness,” he said with a grin.

    It’s also nice to remember, as Mr. Freedman pointed out, that almost anything looks pretty neat if it’s shuffled into a pile.

    That’s right – no anti-biotics would have been discovered if the scientist hadn’t a slob!

    And, last but not least: the passing of Gerald Ford. Interesting details on his life; people have this view of him as the not-so-bright man, but he did go to Yale Law for Pete’s sake. And, his historically not-so-smooth actions arguably took courage and ended up not having terrible consequences (pardoning Nixon may have helped the nation move on from the deceitful past – at least, I don’t hold it against Ford for doing it). Heck, apparently Ford’s telling NYC to “drop dead” as the Daily News always had it in the infamous headline ended up being a good move – Ford was apparently trying to tell NYC to get its fiscal act together before he would agree to give financial assistance, which may have led us out of the fiscal basement. Maybe Ford’s legacy may have something to teach a certain current administration? Well, as a student of American history, I’m always happy to keep learning anyway.  Time moves on, and it’s the time of year to reflect.

  • Christmas Eve 2006

    Belated, but not forgotten: the passing of Joe Barbera. Considering how much Saturday morning cartoons I used to watch… Well, salute to the Barbera of Hanna-Barbera.

    The soon-to-be-closing of Murder Ink, a NYC mystery bookstore; the NY Times prints the observations of the owner, Jay Pearsall:

    A customer who worked at Carmine’s once said it seemed that bookselling must be a lot like tending bar, without the vomit. It’s true that we work hard and fast, serving up recommendations for customers, who sometimes tell us their problems (like the older woman who informed us that the elastic in her underwear had lost its stretch).

    But the game couldn’t go on forever. Over the last few years, it didn’t seem to me that there was much that I could do to control the closing of the stores, except to keep adding more flaming torches to the juggling act and await the inevitable crash and burn. It’s become a sad, familiar song on Broadway, and far beyond, that a small, independent store can no longer keep up with the rent. That is why we are closing our doors for good on New Year’s Eve.

    Every now and then I comb our apartment shelves for books that I can add to the inventory at the stores. Recently, when I grabbed a copy of “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, I noticed one of my scribbled notes sticking out of it: “Every night, just before I leave the store, I take a seat on one of the rolling library stools and reflect on what a great place this is and how I won’t have it much longer.” There’s also written on the slip, in quotation marks (from the Roth book?): “One can only do so much to control one’s life.”

    The soon-to-be-closing of La Rosita, on 108th and Broadway – had passed by it many times. Man, what is happening in NYC? Things closing, but what’s opening?

    A Brooklyn Heights story, related to our alma mater law school.

    I guess during the holidays, there’s much sadness and happiness, and thoughts abound.

    And then there’s this: the Yule Log. Channel 11 aired a great documentary on how it came to be – a little Christmas card to New Yorkers everywhere.

  • A bit of joy – or humor anyway

    I’ll post a little joy here:

    Before he was Dr. House, he was just Hugh Laurie, British comedian, and they’re releasing DVD’s of his old show “A Bit of Fry and Laurie.” I liked the review NY Times’ Vincent Cosgrove made of the DVD – and it sounds like it’s a great DVD with a fun bonus of Laurie’s days in Cambridge with Emma Thompson and the others:

    LONG before Hugh Laurie was captivating and galling American television viewers as the prickly Dr. Gregory House on Fox’s “House,” he was half of the acclaimed British sketch comedy team Fry and Laurie, along with his fellow Cambridge graduate Stephen Fry. (That’s right: Dr. House’s American accent is fake.) Their collaboration began more than 25 years ago, when both were members of the Cambridge Footlights troupe. They went on to team up on numerous TV shows in Britain, but for American audiences they were perhaps best known as Jeeves and Bertie Wooster on the “Jeeves and Wooster” series on “Masterpiece Theater.” [….]

    Thankfully, there are recently released DVDs of the first two seasons of “A Bit of Fry and Laurie,” the duo’s inspired sketch comedy series, originally broadcast in 1989 and 1990 on BBC2.

    Mr. Fry and Mr. Laurie wield words — real or nonsensical — with a precision Henry Higgins would admire. Skewering language, they also conjure a Lewis Carroll-like world. While there are moments of physical comedy, the pratfalls that produce the most laughs are verbal. Sample this prime example of Fry-Laurie gibberish: “Hold the newsreader’s nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.” [….]

    Lamenting TV censors, the two explain that in their next sketch — set in a courtroom — they must use made-up words to describe a crime. Portraying a police officer, Mr. Laurie declares that the defendant called him a “fusking cloff-prunker.” When the judge expresses ignorance of the term, a lawyer (Mr. Fry) defines it as “an illicit practice whereby one person frangulates another’s plimp, my lord. He or she gratifies the other party by smuctating them avially.” Eventually, the bailiff faints.

    A bonus on the DVD of the second season is the “Footlights Revue,” first broadcast on BBC in 1982. The performers — including Emma Thompson — are so young that you can imagine them still clutching their diplomas. In one sketch, Mr. Fry, at his mellifluous best, reads from a letter relating his encounter with Count Dracula in Transylvania. Mr. Fry recalls that when the “mighty oaken door” of the castle opened, he beheld the ghastly sight of Dracula’s manservant: “Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of the man’s nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory.” It’s enough to make the count whirl in his coffin. The rest of us can just have a good laugh.

    The most entertaining thing about the Times’ posting this review on-line – well, they put in this clip of Laurie’s singing this hilarious love song (“Mystery… You remain a mystery to me… Different Country. You and I live in a different country… Estuary. I live on a house boat on an estuary…. [You’ve been d]ead since 1973…So why do I still long for you…”). Oh, and trust me – Jeeves and Wooster – too funny. Laurie was great as the total English gentleman idiot Bertie Wooster. Umm, no offense meant of course; just that Bertie really was an idiot… or, as the article notes, Laurie was quite a hoot indeed.

  • HoHoHo!

    Merry Christmas everyone… posting on X-mas even in Taipei.  Been a very busy week and holiday season.  Lots of people to visit and share with.  Involved with many a church activities as B- joined the community choir group.  They tried to rope me in but alas, I’m the grinch that can’t sing.

    Did more shopping and walking around which made it a much nicer Christmas than 2005. Also, this year it seems that the retailers even got better at promoting it too. Spent a lot of $ on books and so it was very happy :).

    Except for today and yesterday, weather was comfortably nippy to give it a nice wintery Christmasy feel and that was a nice touch. Tomorrow is a company holiday, but not an official government one. Officially, there aren’t that many Christians in Taiwan so there’s no reason to have it as an official holiday according to the gov’t. Inconveniently, Muslim Malaysia has Christmas as one of their official holidays.  Oops.

    Any how, wishing you all a wonderful and safe Christmas and holiday season!

    YC & B-

  • Carol of the Bells

    Haven’t gotten into the Christmas mood yet. It’s hard when the temps have been averaging in the 50’s, the news has been generally depressing, and its been real busy at work. At least the shopping is done – P and I have been giving our Amazon Prime membership a workout, and little brown boxes with the arrow smile have been trickling in over the past week.

    Of all of the holiday songs, the Carol of the Bells is my favorite. It’s relatively short, high energy, and one of the few that are in a minor key.

    Saks Fifth Avenue
    If you’re in New York, you have to check out this display, which is opposite the tree at Rockefeller Plaza.

    Joseph Dang & Texas A&M Percussion
    Starts out as a piano recital, and then just goes crazy from there.

    Trans-Siberian Orchestra
    The original rock orchestra version – in video form.

  • Holi-daze

    As I’ve been posting irregularly – well, apologies in advance for the long post below.
    Saturday: dentist in the morning; afternoon Xmas shopping. The new Borders at Penn Station/MSG (where McGraw-Hill’s place used to be) – cool. Plenty of variety of books, I must say (well, two floors of wide space should allow for that, you’d think; sometimes I feel that the Wall Street one is a little cramped).
    Then, I went to Columbus Circle’s Time Warner building to further the goal of shopping. Walked a bit in Central Park – where upon I spy an only-in-NY thing: a parade of people dressed in Santa Claus suits or elf costumes, plus one Hanukkah Harry in blue (seriously – he was yelling out “Happy Hanukkah,” and his costume – a blue version of the Claus robe – had white letters stitched identifying him as “Hanukkah Harry”). I couldn’t get myself to ask them what was up. They didn’t show up on the local news (no, it wasn’t that important, I guess). If someone knows, just let me know, pretty please.
    As we New Yorkers look forward to the swearing-in of Gov-Elect Spitzer on New Year’s Day, we can also look forward to having the first Asian-American female in the State Assembly: Ellen Young got profiled in the NY Times on 12/13/06 (along with the new assemblyman from Brighton Beach, Bklyn, who is a foreign-born from Russia). Jonathan P. Hicks writes:

    “This is part of a trend that has been going on for some time,” said John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center. “And there will be more of this happening as time goes by.”

    If voters and New York City residents paid little attention to the election of these two Assembly members, it might well be that they have become accustomed to ethnic firsts. In the last decade or so, the city has seen the election of its first Asian-American Council member, John C. Liu, who is also from Flushing. During that time, Queens elected its first Hispanic assemblyman and councilman, Manhattan elected its first Dominican assemblyman and councilman, and Brooklyn elected its first Jamaican-born councilwoman.

    The new Assembly members won two of the most hotly contested Democratic primaries in New York City, and won by the narrowest of victories. [Alec] Brook-Krasny won his primary by about 140 votes, and Ms. Young won a three-candidate primary by fewer than 100 votes.

    Ms. Young was an aide to Councilman Liu and has become known in Flushing as an advocate for immigrant issues, having organized programs to help immigrants fill out Census forms. She also has served as the president of the Chinese American Voters Association.

    Her election reflects a political coming of age for Asian-Americans in Queens. After Mr. Liu’s election to the City Council in 2001, Jimmy Meng became the Assembly’s first Chinese-American member in 2004. But Mr. Meng decided not to run for re-election this year, citing health concerns.

    Ms. Young said that since her election, she had been approached by a number of Asian-American women in her district who say they consider her election an important milestone. Slightly more than 50 percent of the 22nd Assembly District’s residents are Asian-American.

    “There are quite a number of Asian woman who say that I have inspired them,” Ms. Young said. “And they are looking to me as something of a role model. I think it’s nice. But I tell them that I didn’t run because I’m an Asian-American, but that I have been dedicated to my community for 28 years.” [….]

    As I understood it from NY1’s website, which linked to the NY Times’ article: “Inside Albany” – the show aired on local PBS stations to cover NYS government, is coming to an end. Darn shame. It was a good watch on a lazy Saturday afternoon flipping to Channel 13 and seeing what actually happens in Albany. And, these days, I don’t believe our local broadcast news does that in particular depth.

    The passing of Peter Boyle, who played Frank Barone on “Everybody Loves Raymond.”

    And, in today’s paper: the passing of a NY icon – the voice of the “It’s 10pm; do you know where your children are?” Tom Gregory of Channel 5 apparently had quite a broadcasting career than just his line, but still – memorable.

    Interesting AP article posted on MSNBC – what explains the longevity of ER? “It’s the writing, stupid.” Well, we’d like to think so, don’t we? But, I’d like to think there’s almost an implied contract between certain tv shows and audiences – people develop a kind of suspension of belief to stay committed to a beloved show, no matter how it’s written or what new character they bring in to stay “fresh.” I mean, come on – why else did Bonanza lasted for as long as it did? Oh, well.

    World’s first cloned cat has… kittens. Aww. Uh, and eerie.

    The Rosie O’Donnell debacle on “The View” – wherein she imitated the Chinese language to ridicule the coverage on Danny DeVito’s conduct on “The View” thereby offending Asian-Americans – well, she apologized. I certainly cringed when I watched the clips on the news of O’Donnell’s so-called joke. Too many of us grew up with the nasty kids in the playground yelling “ching chong” and I was pissed that an adult like O’Donnell was putting it out there on mainstream tv; there were others ways to joke about the coverage on DeVito. NYC Council member John Liu had called for an apology; and apaprently O’Donnell apologized – but after her spokesperson released a statement along the lines of “well, sorry you didn’t find it funny and no offense was intended.” A group of minority journalists haven’t quite considered this matter as resolved. The San Francisco Chronicle appears to have the most comprehensive article on this, so far as I can tell.
    And, last but not least: Time announces its Person of the Year. Over the last several weeks, they were polling readers and celebrities and even published some of the ideas; some two or so weeks ago, Dr. Andrew Weil suggested to Time that the American voter be the Person of the Year because the American voter was the one who brought change and got the (now tenuous) Democratic majority in the Senate – an idea I applauded (and – well, based on what Time printed, it was pretty obvious on whose side of the Congressional aisle Dr. Weil seemed to be!). Besides, otherwise 2006 didn’t strike me as that great a year. So… guess who’s POY this year? It’s… “YOU.” Eh? Time’s Lev Grossman explains:

    But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

    The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It’s not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.

    And we are so ready for it. We’re ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television.

    And we didn’t just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software.

    America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We’re looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it’s just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy.

    Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

    The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

    Yeah, that’s right. Blame it on YouTube. What is this world coming to, right?  Anyway, congratulations to you – uh, us – on being POY.

  • Five Points

    Friday we went to CAPA‘s variety show event at The Five Points. The best performers were the filipino alternative band Striving in Greater Hopes (SiGH) and comedian Eliot Chang.

    Food menu:
    Silk Road Cafe/The Five Points (satay, small sandwiches, soybeans)
    N.Y. Noodletown (dry wonton mein with veggies, Singapore mei fun)

    Other people’s videos here:
    Misnomer(s) – Korean MC and her violin playing sister

    SiGH – cover of Cranberries’ Zombie:
    Get this video and more at MySpace.com