Month: April 2008

Saturday: my sister and I popped over to the Brooklyn Museum, as it was First Saturday. Crowded crowd – guess they were out for the Murakami exhibit, which opened this weekend to a positive review (so far as I can tell anyway). The line looked long and you had to have a ticket (a long line to get that!) and a wristband – so I wasn’t eager to check out the Murakami stuff; just saw what they had in the lobby – the simultaneously ugly, cute, sexy and scary all at once – that’s Murakami for you (or a derivation of anime, even). Maybe I’ll check it out another time.

Perhaps not entirely a coincidence: in addition to the Murakami (which was contemporary Japanese art), the Brooklyn Museum had “Utagawa: Masters of Japanese Print, 1777-1900,” exhibiting the works of three or four generations of the Utagawa workshop, as they went from traditional to more modern print work. Prints of traditional folk stories, kabuki actors, contemporary Japanese life, and the rise of Western influence – with single point perspective – it was easy to see why the Japanese prints influenced the Impressionists in the West and how Western art influenced Eastern art.

West Point course educating the cadets on cultural diversity… in Jersey City.

In the NY Times’ City section: words from Mr. Sahadi, of Sahadi’s in Brooklyn.

Sooo… as Jennifer 8. Lee so succinclty summarizes in the NY Times’ City Room blog: for the longest time, the Beatles, on behalf of their Apple, Apple (the Steve Jobs’ Apple) in a trademark dispute, and now Steve Jobs’ Apple is engaging in a trademark dispute with NYC regarding the GreeNYC campaign because the latter is using a green apple symbol (’cause, I don’t know, NYC’s been called “The Big Apple” for a real longtime and NYC wants to, I don’t know, go green?). Do we not realize that “apple” isn’t exactly the most unique thing in the world? Flashes from Trademarks class from law school are actually coming to mind.

The passing of Charlton Heston.

We don’t need to drink approximately 8 glasses of water a day after all; Slate’s Explainer explains where the idea ever even came from.

NY Times’ Clyde Haberman on the madness of weekend subway changes.

April is National Poetry Month; April 17 is Poem in Your Pocket Day.
Joe Klein posts his thoughts on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death on the Time.com blog, Swampland. He links to Robert F. Kennedy’s moving speech about America’s need to reconcile for the future in the face of the tragedies. These are things we still think about today and in the future, as noted here by Ron Klain on NYTimes.com and here in Newsweek’s interview with sociologist Michael Eric Dyson. Although there has been much changed in the past 40 years, we still have ways to go, but at least we keep striving.

Hi, YC and FC! Glad to see you’re back on triscribe! Yeah, I’m holding down the fort! Dusted around here and there.

Monday tv:

“The Bracket” episode on “How I Met Your Mother” – was an awesome episode. (A) Barney is such a twit; (B) ohmygoodness, they finally did it – they finally did a “Doogie Howser” reference on “HIMYM”! Neil Patrick Harris, you as “Barney” have redeemed yourself!

Of course, we’re still nowhere near finding out who is the Mother of FutureTed’s kids and maybe there really is going to be something going on between Barney and Robin.

Major plus (whether this was intentional on the part of CBS, I do not know) – the commercial for the sequel to “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” where apparently they get stuck in Guantanamo and Neil Patrick Harris playing a Barney-like Neil Patrick Harris rescues them (or something like that).

Anyway, check out commentary on the episode on TV Guide’s HIMYM blog and by tv critic James Poniewozik on his Time.com blog, where the enthusiasm was no less positive.

Other Monday tv – “New Amsterdam” continues to be interesting when it touches on John Amsterdam’s insanely messy past. It’s so not interesting in covering the contemporary relationships he has with women – namely, he has no chemistry with his female boss; his female partner (although, in this most recent outing, she finally showed more personality, or maybe the writers finally wrote that in for her – I did like that she finally has more gumption and willingness to back up John); or his alleged love interest – the female doctor who may the One for whose love will make John mortal. Yeah right.

Anyway, John clearly is someone who messed up his family during his 400 years of living – yeah, his 60+ year old son seemed to have forgiven him, but apparently not the son he had back in 1913, whose descendants then become… mobsters. Geez.

Great guest star though: Giancarlo Esposito, (formerly of “Homicide“) playing an irritating FBI agent (he was fun to watch, playing the antagonist – NYPD and FBI not quite collaborating on a case; on “Homicide,” he was a less irritating FBI agent, and son of the lieutenant, and on a way better show). He’s currently on Broadway, doing a supporting role on “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

Asian Pacific American Awareness Month (APAAM) started early at Alma Mater with kick-off on Wed., March 26 – I’m a week behind, yeah… Speakers at the opening ceremony: journalist/activist Helen Zia and poet Ishle Park (and former poet laureate of Queens). Well, actually, I missed the program, but it sounded nice. With universities celebrating APA Heritage Month in April, rather than May (due to academic scheduling – who wants to mess up finals, after all), it feels like double the fun!

It’s also that other time of year: college admissions season – wherein the scared high school seniors find out whether schools are accepting them or not. As the NY Times reports on the released statistics from Alma Mater and others, sounds to me that college admissions are competitive and insane as ever. Sigh.