Triscribe

Author: F C

  • It’s Now or Never

    This video could be fun for certain members of this board…

    Brooklyn Restaurant Week winds down, and we tried to make the most of it. Tuesday, Dakar on Atlantic. Good Indian food, although the kitchen was freaking out because they had a surprise health department inspection during the dinner hour. They passed, but everything that came out of the kitchen was either super hot or super cold.

    Wednesday I had a dinner meeting at Evergreen, followed by karaoke at Japas 38 across the street (see video). Enough said.

    Thursday, Queen Italian restaurant. P had linguine with octopus and olive ragu, I had the gnocchi with veal and mushroom sauce. Yum yum yum.

    Friday, we had 2 for 1 at the Atlantic Chip Shop. Fried Macaroni, Cod and Chips, and Fried Twinkies. Super fried!!!

    More eating this weekend…..

  • Calvert DeForest

    Calvert DeForest, a.k.a Larry “Bud” Melman, passed away on Monday.

    He was the subject of an IP dispute between NBC and CBS over his stage name, so he ended up appearing on Late Night with David Letterman under his real name. He lived pretty near to my old high school, and would occationally show up at our musicals, as much to encourage the up-and-coming actors as to enjoy the show.

    The photo I took on the right was from our production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”. I only met him once in person, but he was truly a really nice guy.

  • Tale of Two Cities

    What is up with the City this week? Last week, I was in DC, and yes, there were a lot of panhandlers, but they were relatively non-violent, and crime actually seems to be under control. I was able to walk around Dupont Circle, the monuments, and around Arlington without fear of my life.

    Here in NYC, there are about half the panhandlers, but dag, we had in just four days:

    • a serial auxiliary cop killer (one victim only 19 who was going to my alma mater, NYU, RIP) stopped dead in his tracks in my old haunts where I’ve walked around at 4 in the morning
    • a weird guy whacking people in the head with a machete (back in the Wild Wide West NYC of the late 80’s, I’ve actually been stabbed with one, and I can tell you it’s not pleasant),
    • and yesterday random mob posses fighting over a foul at a high school basketball game, with shots fired and 21 arrested.

    I have that uncertain feeling that one or two more of these kinds of incidents will be be the tipping point toward a meaner New York. Or is just the upswing in the cycle that we can’t do anything about?

    MSG’s announcer had it right: “What the (bleep) is wrong with y’all? Come on!” We just don’t need this.

    P’s brother, the cop, stayed over after working St. Patrick’s Day so that he could catch the Sunday matinee of 300. He wasn’t in uniform, but he did have his piece on him. I hope he isn’t called upon to use it.

    Been a bit quiet lately – my dad’s 2 year anniversary was on Sunday. It wasn’t sad – when we visited, the snow covered everything in a white carpet. It was a good chance to hook up with my sister and plan what we are going to do for our cousin’s June wedding in Toronto.

  • Conference

    I’m on day 3 of my DC trip. Quick recap:

    Uneventful flight, although coworker did not make the flight thanks to the MTA not having A train service on the weekend. He ended up being on standby for about 6 hours. My hotel reservation was screwed up also – they put down February instead of March, and they were totally sold out of rooms. I ended up staying at the brand new Westin in Arlington for about 3x the cost. Arlington feels like Hoboken, and it is about half an hour out of the city, but thankfully near the Metro.

    Sitting in on a conference session on CMS’s – user created websites.  Will make a separate food entry later on today.

  • Lost in Translation

    AS returned to the land of the rising earthquake today. He was still experiencing culture shock as of last week, when we went to PJ Cooke’s, an American diner type place. He just flew back from Miami, and was having a little trouble reading the English menu, I guess because he’s been in Asia for like 7 years. I was trying to help him out with a little translating:

    Waitress: What do you want to order?

    AS: [Hopeless trying to read the menu, grunts, finger pointing]

    FC: This part of the menu are the hamburgers and here are the brunch specials….

    AS: Huh?

    FC: Je ge hai ham bo pou…

    AS:???

    FC: Esto es hamburgesa con queso, y eso es huevos rancheros…

    AS: Oh. [Having a double take] Wow, the menu actually says “huervos rancheros”!

    …..

    Went to Sobaya tonight with P- for Japanese Restaurant Week. I had the duck soba, and she had the chirashi udon. Both very good – rich broths, handmade noodles with bite – impressive. What was more impressive was the starters, especially the yuba “sushi”, which was bean curd skin wrapped around fresh soft tofu, and then offered with real wasabi and dumpling soy sauce. Outstanding, and 20% off this week. Recommended. Afterwards, P- had a chocolate craving, which was satisfied by going to Max Brenner’s Chocolate by the Bald Man, the neighborhood edition. This new cocoa outpost around the corner is way less crowded than the flagship store, but just as audacious. We had crepes to top off desert, but it was just way too rich. Maybe we should have had the ice cream at Sobaya instead.

    Trip on Saturday to DC, woo hoo. P- gets a 5 day girls night out….

  • Posing

    Weddings upcoming: our blogger friend MJ in December, my cousin in Toronto in June.

    Clips from the recent New York Times: Asian Americans just can’t crack the pop music scene. The hunt for the source of that autumn Windows background.

    Friday dinner in Chinatown at Danny Ng’s. Better than average, too much MSG though. Afterwards, went for bubble tea at tea n’ tea on Mott. Not bad.

    P’s sister had her birthday/passing the CPA party at Congee Village. Fantastic food, hopeless maitre’d. Once seated, they got 9 dishes out in 15 minutes. Try to go when it isn’t busy.

    Brunch Sunday at P.J. Clarke’s with AS and family. That was so heavy that we didn’t even have dinner.

    DC trip coming up on Saturday – looking forward to getting away, not looking forward to it being this particular conference.

  • Yearbook

    I was over at P-‘s parents’ house and was looking over her aunt’s yearbook from 1967. Yes, it was from 40 years ago, and it had plenty of pictures of nuns wearing the super-old fashioned whipples. However, it was extremely complete. The sign of a good yearbook is one where the pictures have captions, and that the captions give the names of the people in the photos. In this one, every photo was captioned and had names. You can see the types of things that were important at the time (including Vietnam) and be amazed at number of Chinese students that were there at the time. There was even a Chinese teacher that taught French.

    I was editor of my high school yearbook, and I know how hard it is to put together (we had exactly 1 computer, an IBM XT with WordPerfect 3.1 at the time). All of the layout was still done by hand even in my time.

  • Foiled by French

    In a total gag, I participated in a charity fund raising spelling bee, a la the Putnam County Spelling Bee on Broadway. There were about 40 people in on this. I survived the word “treatise” but got knocked out on the word “chauffeur” – needed to buy a vowel. I would have done much better if it were a vocabulary bee, and not a spelling bee – I think I knew the meanings of all of the words. Oh well – it went to a good cause.

  • A Very Special Presidental New Year Weekend

    Anybody notice that more people are interested in the Lunar New Year this weekend? I don’t even see a whole lot of GW or Abe Lincoln anywhere, except for the new dollar coins being introduced this weekend. Metro, the newspaper, had a Lunar New Year front cover on Friday.

    Rented a Zipcar minivan and got down to JFK to pick up AS and his family. AS’s son has turned into a mild-mannered physical comedian. After a little harassment from the rent-a-cops, we got loaded up and drove back to Battery Park City. We went to the Lighthouse for drinks afterwards, followed by a late night stop-off at White Castle.

    The next day I had dinner with P’s family at Jing Fong on Elizabeth St. Wasn’t bad – see pictures on the flickr bar.

    More eating Sunday – Happy New Year!

  • Ch-Ch-Ch Changes, Brrrrrrrr

    I’ve updated the software that runs triscribe to WordPress 2.1. This did zero to the public face of things, but made a few nice changes to the back end. This includes wysiwyg editing, auto save (no losing your typing if you hit the backspace key), and picture uploading on the same page as the edit. All cool stuff.

    Photos on the flickr strip right now are a trip to City Island for famed seafood restaurant Sammy’s Fish Box. Why go to Red Lobster, when for the same price you can get the finest seafood money can buy in New York. We all got various combo plates, which we could only eat half of. P and I took our leftovers and made seafood fra diabolo the next day – two meals out of one dish. Recommended.

    Chinese New Year this weekend, and our friend AS and family flies in tomorrow night. It’s going to be below 20 degrees F for the next couple of days. Brrrr!