Category: Brooklyn

Sunday night: my Alma Mater APA alumni group today did some theatre (Pan Asian Repertory Theatre‘s presentation of the play, “Tea” on the experiences of Japanese war brides) and dinner at Franchia (Asian/vegetarian cuisine and tea). I missed the play (but heard that it was good), as I was watching “Shrek” with the siblings per prior plans that couldn’t be avoided. I would have liked to have seen the play, so who knows whether I’ll catch it before it closes.

Franchia – food seemed very nice – meat-like food seemed meat-like, and good tea.

“Shrek” – hmm. Visually stunning. Some good one-liners. But, not nearly as good as, say, the first Shrek movie.

WNBC -Channel 4 in NYC – brought back its old “We’re 4 New York” promotion. It’s a catchy tune, and one can’t resist singing along. Thanks to the Power of Google, I found out why the promo’s back – Gothamist reports:

We talked with David Hyman, WNBC’s Vice President of Programming and Creative Services about why they brought back the classic campaign now and what they are going to do with it.

Why bring back We’re 4 New York now?
There are many reasons for it. We were considering doing a fresh new branding campaign, which we haven’t done in a few years and we thinking about different messages and what our message is exactly and all of the different platforms we are living with now. And we all started talking about 4 New York.

There are really very few campaigns that have had this resonance and response that 4 New York had over the last fifteen years or so. Very few broadcast campaigns in New York have had that kind of reaction and response and legs. We were thinking about it and we were thinking New York is strong, the station is strong and it was probably a great idea to bring back what is considered to be a great branding campaign.

I have talked to people, across all ages and stripes, when I mentioned 4 New York people just had this sort of wonderful glowing response to it. While we certainly don’t make our decisions based on that, anecdotally it was interesting to find that out. It has changed a lot since its infancy in ’92. This new campaign is more sophisticated than the original one. At the end of the day it is something that has a tremendous positive upbeat message, it doesn’t make any overt claims really and it is something that makes you feel good.

I agree – “We’re 4 New York” is a happy, feel good thing. The new version has the Sports Guys together (Len Berman, Bruck Beck – who’s turning out to be quite a busy guy, covering for Len on Fridays and Weekends, and then staying up late to be the back up for Mike’d Up on Sunday nights – and Otis Livingston) singing, Tiki Barber, Brian Williams, and of course Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons (the longest running paired anchors in NYC’s local tv). I kind of missed how the old one had Al Roker and Len together; but yeah, these days, Al’s the Man on the Today Show…

Ultimately, I do like the “We’re 4 New York” promo – it kind of grows on you, and it’s quite all right to be a promo that’s seen every couple of years; that way, no one gets to hate you and your promo.

As Asian-Pacific-American Heritage Month is winding down, I’ll link to the NY1 Special Report on APA’s. Seems like NY1’s theme for this year was on Carribbean/Latino Asians. Interesting – these would be Asians who are not just bi-cultural, but tri-cultural, even – Asian, American, Latino or Carribbean.

A NY Times article on how the folks in Flushing are learning to speak Mandarin to deal with the neighbors.

NY Times’ Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman on making a good burger. Check out the included video demonstration on his cheese lamburger “inside-out lamburger” – wherein he inserts smoked mozzerella cheese into ground lamb, grills, and makes what looks like a fantastic cheeseburger (although, I can’t say that I’m into lamb). As Homer Simpson would say: Mmm. Burger.

A NY Times Magazine’s interesting article on how we came to have the whole 5-cent returns for cans, and why can’t we have that for the ubiquitous water bottles – and what may be really happening with our society and the issue of recycling.

Interesting article in the Week in Review on tourists – “Ugly American” be damned: they’re all ugly. Paul Vitello writes:

EVERY summer, people all over the world become acquainted again with a deep truth spoken by the philosopher-tourist Steve Martin.

He was speaking for tourists everywhere, not just to France, when he said: “Boy, those French, they have a different word for everything!” [….]

But it is bad news only in those isolated cases (which you hear about if you talk to cabbies, tour guides and certain sarcastic individuals in sales) where the awe of Mr. Martin’s revelation is supplanted by the ugly reality of a culture clash — a tip denied, a personal boundary violated, or a long line at a drug store counter jumped by a family of Italian-speaking people, who forever thereafter shall be remembered by the offended party present (an acquaintance of mine) as those “ugly Europeans.”

Let it be said that no group holds a monopoly on the title of “ugly.” Tip-stiffing, line-jumping, excessive price-haggling, sidewalk-blocking-when-stopping-suddenly-to-take-pictures-of-a-person-playing-the-steel-drums — none of these are unique to any national group.

Expedia, the online travel service, conducted a survey of tourist boards around the world that rated British tourists as the most obnoxious. Some people in the tourism world claim that the Chinese, the newest wave of world travelers, are even more so.

Whatever. Is it time, at least, for retiring the term “ugly American” from the dictionary of foreign phrases?

The answer, according to experts in the rarified field of tourism anthropology, is a possible yes.

“Ugly” behavior in tourists is almost always in the eye of the people being toured; and Americans are no longer the only, or even the dominant group of tourists out in the world. We are now as often toured as tour-ing. [….]

To be an ugly tourist is to miss the fundamental truth in Mr. Martin’s statement. “It is to have an overall lack of understanding that there is such a thing as cultural difference,” wrote Prof. Inga Treitler, the secretary for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, in an e-mail message.

Valene Smith, an anthropology professor at California State University at Chico who pioneered the academic study of tourism and travel in the 1970s, said that the tourists most likely to be deplored by their hosts these days are not the euro-rich Europeans or the British or the standard ugly Americans but the Chinese.

“They have only been traveling widely in the last five years or so, but they are touring in numbers no one has seen before — by the thousands,” she said. “They behave as they would at home — there is a lot of pushing and shoving. Very few speak languages other than Chinese.”

Last summer, in an incident widely discussed among travel experts, she said, 40,000 Chinese tourists descended on the small German city of Trier to visit the birthplace of Karl Marx.

“It was quite a mess,” Professor Smith said. “No one was prepared ahead of time. The Germans were quite upset.” [….]

Gee-whiz. Chinese tourists making it possible to say… “Ugly Chinese”? Just ain’t good, man. Just ain’t good. Ugly Europeans. Ugly Americans. Ugly people, period.

And, on that note, take the good, the bad, and the ugly to just sit back and reflect on Memorial Day’s true meaning.

Catching up: this week was the Alma Mater Law School Reunion – umm, yeah, interesting. Chelsea Piers’ The Lighthouse; took a bit of public transportation; would’ve been nice if it hadn’t rained; but the food was pretty much okay; dessert spectacular. I’ll let FC and P put in their own say about it; suffice it to say that we agreed that the little crabcakes and dessert wontons were quite good.

NBC’s “Heroes” season finale tomorrow night. Get ready!

Watched the end of the “Grey’s Anatomy” season finale – give actress Sandra Oh an Emmy; I was amazed by the ambiguity of her character Christina – she loves Burke, no doubt, but does she want to get married; is she just a surgeon; is she really “free” as she proclaimed in tears that were hardly of joy? And, Meredith Grey – Lord, the woman is messed up, and meanwhile is the show setting us up for another Grey? I gritted my teeth and realized why I’ve been losing interest in the show and have scaled back on watching it – it’s no fault of either of the actresses playing Christina or Meredith, but the plots drive me nuts.

ABC presented a review of “Lost” which helped me appreciate the craziness that is “Lost.” I may very well end up watching the season finale next week.

PBS showed the documentary “The Slanted Screen,” on the portrayal of Asian/APA males on the screen. I was watching most of it the other night – interesting takes and I thought it was overall a pretty good documentary with clips of, say, one of George Takei’s roles (I keep forgetting he did stuff other than Star Trek) but I kind of agree with an analysis over why the documentary had to be limited to Asian/APA men? Not to say that the men’s portrayal has been very good on tv/movies, but neither has Asian/APA women. Portrayal of Asian/APA people in general leaves much to be desired.

But, we can be hopeful, when shows like “Lost,” “Heroes,” and “Grey’s Anatomy” have more diverse casts – and actually use these talented actors of color – and more Asians/APA’s in the directing/writing/producing side of things (I heard Nair’s “The Namesake” was doing well; I really have to read the book and watch the movie already). Then again – “Lost” and “Heroes” are using Asian/APA’s actors to play Asians, and not really as APA’s (check out this Newsday article on the topic of Asians/APA’s on tv) – and I’d like to see just a few more APA’s on tv (speaking as an APA). Well, we’ll see.

TV industry rolling out their fall 2007 schedules this past week. Goodbye to the NBC tv show “Raines” – which was pretty good with Jeff Goldblum and a diverse and interesting cast; too bad you didn’t get the ratings numbers and no good time slot.

NBC jumps deeper in the trend to have British actors play Americans (Damian Lewis, the insane Soames Forsythe of British tv’s “The Forsythe Saga”? Well, he has played American before, so I guess I can’t criticize).

CBS renews “How I Met Your Mother” – hooray! NBC renews “Scrubs”! Whoa.

All the networks are seemingly going for more quirky shows. I don’t mind quirky, but sometimes I’d like a little originality. Come on, a vampire private detective? WB already did that – it was called “Angel,” and unless they’re going a different route on this (I guess doing something without Angel’s emotional baggage). Moreover, NBC’s “Chuck” also sounds an awful lot like old UPN’s “Jake 2.0.” Other ideas include: musical tv? (even after just about 15 years, have we not learned from “Cop Rock,” even if this new show has Hugh Jackman and is derived from a British project?); an immortal cop? A bionic woman?

(Okay, NBC, let’s see what you can do with the return of Jaime (not Jamie?) Summers; I actually watched those reunion movies back in the 1980’s and 1990’s where Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man saved the world and finally got together, and I enjoyed them – call me sick; there’s always potential for this kind of idea – but if you’re going to make Ms. Summers like Sydney Bristow, Buffy or Veronica Mars… well, you’re going to have to really work at it to impress me).

I can’t help but be intruiged by FOX’s using Kelsey Grammar and Patricia Heaton to do another take on a sitcom taking place at a tv network news setting. It’s seems just a bit different for a sitcom – and returning two familiar faces who do bear resemblances to local anchornews people. Hmm.

APA’s in the news: Sunday Times: profiling David Chang, rising foodie star.

Time magazine profiling Khaled Hosseini, the writer of “The Kite Runner,” whose new book “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is getting rave reviews.

Daily News’ coverage of City Councilman Eric Goia’s experiment of living on one week’s worth of food stamps was interesting. Goia’s closes it with suggestions on the food stamp issue, including giving recipients ability to buy healthy food. He noted being hungry, yet managing to gain pounds off of the less healthy cheap carbs he bought – which goes toward showing the sad reality of how poor populations develop heart and weight problems.

Mets. v. Yankees subway series – game three tonight. Go Mets!

Happy Mother’s Day to all Mothers Everywhere.

Hmm. Spider Solitaire (usually found on Windows XP) – an addicting game to say the least – really have to pull away from it. Really. I’ll say that much.

Just a little catching up: last Sunday’s APA Heritage Festival at Union Sq. was very nice – pretty much bumped into everyone!

The custody battle for a beloved dog.

A look at the art of Edward Hopper.

Last month, I noted the story of the governor who tried to live off of food stamps for a week. Saturday’s Daily News reports that, this week, City Councilman Eric Goia (D., Queens) is trying out the experiment. He’s apparently coming down to the determination that there are people in hunger in this city. No, really? Well, we’ll see if this trendy experiment will bring up new ideas and ways to battle poverty and hunger in this city/state/country.

Interestingly, NY Times has an op ed on the subject of hunger and food stamps this Mother’s Day.

Presidential candidates’ personal preferences.

A rather amusing article reviewing the release of the DVD of Season 1 of “Hawaii 5-0.”

NY Times’ Mark Bittman on getting the best steak frites in Paris. Mmm. Fries.

Plus, Bittman with a risotto recipe, along with the accompanying video. The butter and oil that chef Mario Batali put into his risotto – goodness. But, looks tasty and otherwise, Bittman and Batali made it look easy. Almost makes me want to cook. Umm, yeah, right…

A profile on Allyson Hannigan, the ex-Willow of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame, and currently Lily on “How I Met Your Mother” on CBS, a pretty darn good comedy. And, I agree – Lily and Marshall are probably the only couple in the TV multiverses who are in a healthy relationship – heck, they’re surviving Marshall’s time as a Columbia Law student. All they have to do is get through Marshall’s bar review experience, and they’re golden.

Serious note: Law Day – celebrating rule of law, not about celebrating lawyers, the NY Times editorial on May 1 notes. I’ll applaud that.

But, meanwhile, I found it highly disturbing that the Daily News spent Sunday and Monday on a Special Exclusive on the city’s alleged worst lawyers – people who resigned or were disciplined because they seriously screwed up. That’s nice to know, but not quite sure what else Daily News was trying to do – as if people didn’t already have little faith in the system as it is – as if we don’t learn what not to do.

Interesting article on the current trends on Civil Rights history, Southern history, and American conservatism – as a new generation of historians consider examining the Civil Rights era from the lenses of the White moderates. Patricia Cohen writes:

Conservative appeals to limit the government’s reach and emphasize individual freedoms resonated not only in the South, but in the North as well, said Joseph Crespino, 35, whose book, “In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution” (Princeton University Press), was just published.

The racial and religious conservatism of whites, for instance, “converged in unexpected ways in the fight over federal tax policy toward Southern private schools,” Mr. Crespino writes. He said that while many Southern whites set up “segregation academies” for the sole purpose of avoiding school integration, others were genuinely interested in sending their children to church schools for religious reasons. “By the late ’70s, this issue of defending church schools against harassment by the federal government and the I.R.S.,” Mr. Crespino explained in an interview, led to the “mobilization of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.”

Mr. Crespino, who grew up in rural Mississippi, said his research was partly inspired by his experience. Many of the African-Americans he met in the deeply segregated precincts of Chicago while he was an undergraduate at Northwestern University had come from his home state and were struggling with the same issues they had had down South. “Rather than treating white Mississipians as these racist pariahs in larger postwar liberal America, I wanted to treat them as part of a broader popular reaction against modern liberalism,” he said. “I wanted to show how central the resistance to civil rights policies were in shaping modern conservative policies.” [….]

Like Mr. Crespino, Matthew D. Lassiter was motivated to research his own Southern roots. He found a gap between the history he had learned in school and his experience growing up in its wake in Sandy Springs, a white, middle-class suburb of Atlanta. “I was trying to find my own people, my parents and grandparents,” said Mr. Lassiter, 36, who wrote “The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South” (Princeton) published last year. “There were a few white Southerners who were liberals, a larger number throwing the rocks with the rioters and the vast group in the middle were left out of the story.”

As a graduate student at the University of Virginia, he taught undergraduates and assigned the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” in which he wrote, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride towards freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than justice.”

Reading this just tempted me to go get the books; really reminded me of what I studied back in college and discussing the course of post-World War II America with the TA’s. … ok, pardon, geeking out as the former history major that I am. 😉

But, it is interesting to wonder – what is the moderates’ position in society? Are moderates more a threat than they realize, by virtue of what they hold as priorities? Or are they too busy concerned about stability and status quo (maybe even too scared shitless) to dare pursue a course of justice and a better world?

Hmm. Kind of makes me question why I consider myself a a left-of-center moderate. Kind of.

Leading to an interesting question, which NBC’s “Heroes” made me wonder: “If You Could Save Millions of Lives, Wouldn’t You?” Would you dare to save the world? … Well, Monday’s episode was just plain awesome. And, reminds me once again why time traveling episodes drive me a little nuts (the possibilities of paradoxes astound me). Actors Masi Oka (as Future Hiro and Present Hiro – thumbs up!) and James Kyson Lee (as Hiro’s sidekick Ando) play well as Asians/APA’s on tv. Oh, and finally (even if it was in the future) the character Dr. Mohinder Suresh takes a heroic action ( I won’t say more, in case others haven’t watched yet)… once we head back to the present, well, surely the hard part’s coming…

More cool space stuff: pictures from Jupiter.

On the local side of things:

The planned arts library in Brooklyn is hitting a snag; not easy when the Brooklyn Public Library is experiencing another change in leadership. Guess I can only hope for the best for BPL, since libraries in the city need better hours and facilities as a basic matter.

And, last but not least: Frank Bruni reviews Max Brenner. I did like the Union Sq. one myself, but he’s right – it can be a bit much.

Last Wednesday, managed to catch the Design Made in Africa exhibit at the World Financial Center, co-sponsored by the Museum for African Art. Fantastic looking and very utilitarian pieces of furniture and other object des arts – modern Africa heading towards the 21st Century – at the Courtyard Gallery in the World Financial Center from April 12 to June 24.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D., Ore.) is trying out an experiment: can he live off of food stamps for a week? Apparently, he’s trying to raise awareness as to how not very good the food stamp program is to feed people in need. Part of it is indeed a question of when was the last time the governor actually did his own food shopping, but I’d still applaud him for trying – imagine if we made all the politicians perform this experiment. Perhaps it’d force them to really think about ways to really help people.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick on the oral arguments at the US Supreme Court on the whole question of campaign reform. The article was quite funny, in a sad way (sad, well, in terms of political thinking, and depending on where one is on the political spectrum…).

9/11/01 remnants for archivists’ subject material.

FC, P, and I saw “Hot Fuzz” on Saturday. In the movie, Sgt. Nicholas Angel, a cranberry juice drinker, is sent to the boondocks because he’s too good a cop for his superiors in London to accept (because, well, he makes them look bad). However, Angel finds out that there’s more to the boondocks than he would have thought. Much more.

Slate’s movie critic Dana Stevens says, “Hot Fuzz is like an Agatha Christie novel directed by Michael Bay and adapted for the screen by P.G. Wodehouse.” Well, I’d agree on the Michael Bay part; less so on the Agatha Christie (unless you’re thinking of Christie’s creation of Miss Marple and Miss Marple’s town of St. Mary Meade, where – you guessed it! – the town’s murder rate is kind of ridiculous and Miss Marple’s probably a closet psychopath); and really less so on P.G. Wodehouse (well, unless you’re citing Wodehouse as the source of wacky British humo(u)r; I’d say Monty Python would’ve been a better reference). Honestly, I’d expect good old Inspector Morse walking into “Hot Fuzz.” The whole beer thing would’ve been perfect for him; but not, say, the gun thing. No, that’d still be in the realm of Michael Bay.

All in all, thumbs up to the movie.

FC, P, and I later had afternoon tea at Sweet Melissa Patisserie, across from the movie theater. We managed not to give in to the sweets – but they looked soo good.

Daily News publishes Mario Cuomo’s thoughts on the recent Democratic debate – with his idea that there ought to be a permanent debating system to let the candidates talk about actual ideas. I thought there were some good thoughts. Personally, I kind of feel for the candidates who aren’t likely to make headway – Joe Biden actually does have real ideas on Iraq (not that I’ve read up on them enough, but he certainly knows what he’s talking about) and Bill Richardson has quite a resume – he’s now a governor and was a UN Ambassador and is Latino (although, his tenure as US Dept. of Energy Secretary included the debacle toward Wen Ho Lee – something APA’s aren’t going to quite forget – at least I haven’t). The candidates are many; the competition will be rough.

“Heroes” – a bit caught up. The episode of 4/30/07 will be interesting…