Category: Brooklyn

Had the car today so we went to Costco to pick up a few things. As you know, everything is bigger at a wholesale store, including the audacity. In a regular supermarket, super shoppers frustrate the packers by picking around in the back of the freezer case to find the milk and eggs with the latest expiration date. At the Costco, the freezer case is actually a meat locker with rows of glass doors on opposite walls. I saw people opening the refrigerator case doors, actually stepping over the older product in the front to get to the row of carts in the center that are being held in reserve. They would come out of the lockers with armfulls of milk and eggs looking like they had just looted the store. Now that’s chutzpah!

A belated note: the passing of Lou Rawls. I was amused by the NY Times’ obituary noting that Lou Rawls did the songs on the “Garfield” cartoons (probably my main introduction to Lou Rawls, besides his work on the United Negro College Fund tv specials). Ironically, Channel 4 (WNBC) aired the syndicated “An Evening of Stars” this afternoon (a taped program), with the caption on the bottom that it was taped before the passing of Rawls. A salute to Rawls.

Today, the NY Giants lost to the Carolina Panthers. Oh well, the end to quite a season.

In the NY Times: an interesting story on the snow in Japan’s “snow country.”

NY Times has an article on cooking eggs: Daniel Patterson writes that his environmental lawyer fiancee wouldn’t let him used Teflon pans, so he resorted to other ways to cook eggs. The recipes look interesting. (not that I cook, but I liked his writing anyway).

The upcoming hearings for Judge Alito. A primer from the NY Times. We live in interesting times.

Slept in late (for me anyway).

Updates to my little website. New art, one new piece of short fiction. Although, the website’s still a work in progress, so pardon any interruptions…

Fascinating story on cat evolution from the NY Times.

P- was out last night with her high school friends for their post-Christmas gift giving dinner. That left me home alone to fend for myself.

This was the perfect opportunity to try out for myself the Karaoke DVD player that I got her for Christmas. Self-consciousness is not a factor when you can practice karaoke at home! I got the one-legged Chris Martin jig down pat while singing Coldplay’s “Yellow”, and mangled a few other songs on the three disk Memorex economy karaoke set.

The final song I did from that collection was Lou Rawls’ “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”. As my natural range is baritone, the song works well for me. From the second half of the song, which is sung-spoken, I could see how he could have been the predecessor to today’s rap and slam, as some accounts claim.

It was a shock to hear today that Rawls had passed away from cancer. His history of giving back, including the years he ran a telethon for the Negro College Fund, makes him someone to be admired. We’re going to miss his lovin’, baby.

“Chinese Language Catching on in US classrooms” – hmm. So, kindergarteners can learn Mandarin Chinese and I still can’t figure out Cantonese? Oh, well. Nice to see America trying to embrace multi-lingualism, as usual.

Dining articles almost makes me hungry —

Looking for a good macaroni and cheese recipe? NY Times has a nice article and some recipes.

An article on a drink that’s not sake.

Mark Bittman is encouraging readers to go back to butter.

Tips on plaintains in Newsday.

Daily News’ David Bianculli felt that Vargas and Woodruff on ABC’s World News Tonight were pretty good. I caught the new on-line World News Now webcast on ABC News on-line – it looks and feels like World News Tonight – familiarity can be a good thing. (like, keeping the theme song more or less intact, unlike Nightline’s strange break from its respectable past). So, maybe Vargas and Woodruff can do a decent job.

Speaking of Nightline, Ted Koppel, his executive producer, and a number of Nightline staff got signed on to Discovery channel, to do the stuff Ted wants to do. Well, good luck to Ted. And, gee, will I really have to give in to getting cable someday???

The WMF Microsoft exploit is causing a lot of trouble, and not just because of the mad scrambling for countermeasures for a Windows flaw that only requires you to view a bad picture. SANS, a separate security group, is asking users to install their unofficial independent fix for the flaw until Microsoft puts out their scheduled Tuesday update. What does this mean for the Windows platform – more organized third-party support, a public relations retreat later on this week, or the forced migration of more users to Apple or Linux?

Winter showers: the leak’s back on again in the bathroom. Had about 2-3 gallons of water come out from the side of the patched ceiling. I almost think that someone upstairs is just dumping water down a hole or something, because it doesn’t seem to be connected with actually using the shower – it tends to occur afterwards.

Cool sounds: on digg.com is a discussion about Holophonic Sound – you have to use headphones, but it gives a 3D effect to sound. You can actually hear the things go left to right, and even above and behind. Try listening to the following sounds on your MP3 player – they’re really cool:

DimensionsFX
Cereni

Edge World Question Center offers this year’s Most Dangerous Ideas. Fascinating!

It’s 2006!

Great year in review, FC!

New Year’s Day – I saw “Memoirs of a Geisha.” I never read the book (or only read parts of it; I haven’t been able to make the full read for whatever reason), so I wasn’t watching the movie to make any comparison. But is it a great movie? Well, I can’t say. Visually fascinating, but the pacing of the plot was a serious slow go: the beginning half could have had more momentum.

Ziyi Zhang (or Zhang Ziyi in China) was okay, but maybe I feel this disappointment because I was uncomfortable with her character, who isn’t the spitfire her past characters have been, rather than due to Zhang’s acting ability. (Like in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” – boy was she something there). Zhang’s English was okay for the movie, and most of the movie was about her and the art of the geisha – but there’s the feeling that had this movie been in Japanese and done with subtitles, it would have been more authentic and fascinating (well, it’s a Hollywood movie, so how much authenticity was I expecting?). Michelle Yeoh was very good, and Ken Watanabe – wow, he could just as well not speak any language and he just packed in emotion and expression so well.

Some interesting stories on-line:

The little rovers that could are still on Mars, chugging along on their mission (to go where no one has gone before… 😉 )…

The assistant US Attorney, who blogged about federal courts (his own jurisdiction) without permission, has left the US Attorney’s office. For my own safety, ummm, yeah, I’ll reserve comment.

Liz Vargas and former corporate attorney Bob Woodruff are about to officially takeover as co-anchors of ABC World News Tonight. Apparently, ABC will make them into roving anchors. Oh, geez, like that’ll be the way to earn viewers in the early 21st century – it’s not about the roving around, it’s about the quality of the reporting, stupid! I, a former ABC News viewer, have all but succumb to NBC News (MSNBC.com’s airing of Nightly News after its airing and Brian Williams’ blogging have been interesting stuff) and PBS Newshour (you can’t beat the in-depth coverage of Jim Lehrer and the gang). I’m not pleased by “Nightline” (although I think Terry Moran has his moments, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir leave so much to be desired – they’re just not Nightline people; they’ve a 20/20 or tabloidy touch to them).

And, I ought to give NBC credit – I had thought the long transition of Tom Brokaw to Brian Williams was silly, but I now realize that it just made things more seamless and less-distressing. ABC should buckle up for a bumpy ride; not that Vargas and Woodruff can’t be anchors – but it will take time to get used to them and gimmicks won’t make it any good. Or maybe I’m prematurely being a doomsayer. But, I only criticize because I think they can do better.

Fascinating food articles in the NY Times this Sunday:

Food and Memory in Kyoto; and the NY Times’ food critic Frank Bruni samples the diversity of cuisine in Capetown, South Africa.

The new year: the expectation of better things to come. I think I’m just renewing last year’s resolutions for this year. But, no matter what, may we all fulfill our resolutions!

Hi,
This is my annual New Year’s message, where I traditionally recap the last year, give some stats, and pick one topic to write about, usually consisting of a few weeks of research and 24 hours of (possibly) focused writing and resolution-making.

To start off, I wanted to especially thank you for your kindness and support for my family and myself, in this very difficult year with the passing of my father in March. There are never enough opportunities to let you know that it means a lot to me.

Statistics for the Year
Email: 744 megabytes (+42% from last year)
ZipCars driven: 24 (+62% from last year)
Miles flown: 28,168 (-38% from last year)

Top ten search terms on triscribe.com:

1. everwood season premiere [not my idea, never seen the show]
2. new year message
3. Dae Jang Geum/Jewel in the Palace [Korean tv period drama]
4. Incheon Airport
5. Grassland Bus [Malaysian inter-city bus line]
6. Pari Chang [New York Times columnist, not Asian, but married to one]
7. Edith Spivak [New York City’s first female attorney, passed away this year]
8. Eltabina [another Malaysian bus line]
9. Amazing [Race]
10. poutine [a unctuous Canadian mix of French Fries, brown gravy, and farmer’s cheese]

This year’s essay is about observing unexpected paths, and how you can recapture your youth at the mall. I’m going to jump around, but hopefully we’ll get to where we are going.

Whenever I travel, I try to do two things: see a mall/department store and a supermarket. I feel that one gets to see how people really live day-to-day when you observe what they buy for themselves. I get to see the kinds of products that are the same as at home, and see what is important to them. I learnt this the hard way when I was doing a study abroad in Hong Kong, and had to figure out where to get food and supplies without busting my budget eating out.

Last weekend, I tried to do that here in Brooklyn. I went to Kings Plaza for the first time in about 10 years. For those who are not familiar with Kings Plaza, it is a shopping mall in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn. At 24 acres and 130 stores, it is your typical mid-sized American mall. The other thing you must know is that it is in the middle of nowhere. It is on the Mill Basin marina at the southernmost part of Flatbush Avenue, just before the Gill Hodges Bridge to Far Rockaway. In other words, it is one step away from the Siberia of New York.

I want to tell you upfront that I was definitely not a “mall rat” as a youth. Many young people of the “Breakfast Club”/”Valley Girl” era hung out at malls across the country, and the only serious place to do that in Brooklyn was Kings Plaza (the puny Fulton Mall doesn’t count). Many school-bus-pass-holding latch-key kids did just that. At that time, I don’t think I ever went there without my parents, not in high school, not even in college. The primary reason was that it was always so difficult to go there – the only practical public transport was the Church Avenue bus to Flatbush, and then the Flatbush Avenue bus south down the entire length of the borough, which would take over an hour. A ride from high school would be a trek across the breadth of the borough, also an hour.

The way to go would be by car. My dad would pile us all into his white Chevy Monte Carlo, drive down Ocean Parkway or Coney Island Avenue, make a left on Foster Avenue, then right on Flatbush Avenue. After about half an hour, the corner of Kings Plaza’s white block letter sign would peak over the horizon like the “Hollywood” sign if it was mounted on the side of a building.

The routine would be pretty much the same each visit. My mom would do the clothes shopping in Macy’s or Alexander’s, and my dad would corral us around some sort of mannequin display, where we would be hot, bothered, and hyperactive. Occasionally, we would get to see a movie (the first I saw at the Cineplex Odeon was the World War II epic “Midway” – not your typical fare for a six-year-old). Lunch would be at the faux-French restaurant “The Crepe and the Pancake”, where the rotisserie rack of flavored syrups at each table made the pancakes all good and a bowl of French onion soup was a foreign treat. If we were really good, we would get oatmeal raisin cookies from the Cookie House, some kind of health food from GNC (I was allergic to chocolate as a child, so Tiger’s Milk carob bars were my substitute for chocolate), or a smoothie from Bananas. By fifth grade, we were also spending time in the Waldenbooks picking up books of every topic, but I remember getting my first computer and science fiction books there.

Jumping a few decades later, I was returning the ZipCar that I had borrowed on Christmas Day to Brooklyn College, and on a whim decided to go down to Kings Plaza. It’s been seriously spruced up – they even have carpet and a sky light on the second level, but many things remain the same. Alexander’s the retail store is gone – replaced by Sears — but Alexander’s the real estate giant is doing great as the landlord of the entire mall. Cookie House upgraded to a corner store, still emitting the distinctive scent of fresh-baked cookies on the first floor. Those cookies enticed me to see what had become of the rest. Waldenbooks, CVS, Bananas and GNC are all in the same places. The Crepe and the Pancake closed years ago, but a new storefront called “Eden’s Crepes and Shakes” has taken up crepe making duties across from Express. The Israeli partners that opened the new stand said that they were told about the previous store, and claim that they are better. I have to give it to them that they are much more authentic, although they are served in a handy hand-held foil pouch. They don’t have the flavored syrups, though (not that you are supposed to use them on crepes anyway).

While my parents didn’t do a whole lot of traveling once they had kids, they, especially my dad, were very supportive of when I wanted to travel. It was a separate part of my education that developed my creativity, helping me to connect disjointed things. I can say this year I’ve had crepes in Harajuku, Tokyo as well as in Brooklyn, New York; Vietnamese pho in Honolulu as well as in Chicago; Japanese dishes from Osaka in Washington, DC. We had an array of homemade dishes at a potluck in a convention center with a guy from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in Inuyama, Japan, where he is an elected official. Steaks at home with my law school buddies and their wives in Taipei. There is even a museum in Yokohama where I had 5 bowls of the best ramen to be had anywhere.

Looking through some old documents that my mother showed me, it turns out that my father actually was something of a world traveler himself before he was married. He was in Yokohama, apparently enroute from Hong Kong. On a separate trip, Honolulu was a port of call on the way to Jamaica. I knew he worked in London as a cook for several years, but I had forgotten that he had gone to Minnesota to learn orthopedics, stayed a night in Chicago with the entire family after being snowed in leaving my cousin’s wedding (ironically, we were put up in the French hotel chain Sofetel, and I believe we had crepes), and had several stops in Miami and Washington, D.C. So, I could see why he was always interested when I told him I was flying to some place or another. I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to experience these places in common, and look forward to traveling to other places with this vision.

Last year’s resolution was “recapture my childhood”. It was not the way I wanted; it was not the way I intended; it was not the way I expected. But, on the last weekend of this year, I did at the mall, and the lesson to be learnt is to have faith in following the path, wherever it may go.

So, for this year, I have two resolutions, one of which I am going to keep to myself – I’ll let you know next year if I came through on it. The other will be to do what I can to share my love for travel. I am not sure how I am going to do this as yet, but you’ll see them in action on my blog at triscribe.com.

I always want to thank my contributors-in-crime on the blog that make sure that there is always something interesting being published when I come up lacking. Finally of course, thanks to my girlfriend, who took a leap of faith and has domesticated my bachelor’s pad and my bachelor’s life. She means the world to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope that 2006 will be a much better year for the both of us.

My original entry here got wiped out in a browser crash, but the outline of what was my week included:

• 100 miles of driving (ZipCar to the rescue): 2 round trips to Starrett City, 2 round trips to Richmond Hill, 2 round trips to my Mom’s house. Amazingly I got a car on Christmas Day, although I had to go to Brooklyn College to get it.
• several meals: Christmas dinner: chino latino style – pernil, rice and peas, mac and cheese, hoisin chicken, stirfried veggies; dinner at our sentimental favorite Essex (the Wednesday lobster special is very nice); another dinner with college friends at GermanChristmasWonderlandTavernontheGreenonLSD restaurant Rolf’s (recommended, reservations a must).
• much relaxing, catching up on tv using the new Slingbox that P’s brother in law got me, and going to try out Civilization IV (email game anybody?). I will try it out before I continue working on my annual New Year’s message (which for some reason got a lot of hits from Yahoo this week). It will be something slightly different this year.

More tomorrow….

Looking forward to FC’s year-end entry!

Bizarre Reuters article on Yahoo, with a curious first line: “Would you pay $175 for a pound of coffee beans which had passed through the backside of a furry mammal in Indonesia?” Apparently, the civet’s digestive system does something to the coffee beans:

“People like coffee. And when they want to treat themselves, they order the Kopi Luwak,” said Isaac Jones, director of sales for Tastes of The World, an online supplier of gourmet coffee, tea and cocoa.

Despite being carnivorous, civets eat ripe coffee cherries for treats. The coffee beans, which are found inside of the cherries, remain intact after passing through the animal.

Civet droppings are found on the forest floor near coffee plantations. Once carefully cleaned and roasted, the beans are sold to specialty buyers. [….]

He expects to sell around 200 pounds of the coffee this year, with orders coming from North America and Europe. So far, most of the orders have been from California.

Indonesia produces only about 500 kilograms, or roughly 1,100 pounds, of the coffee each year, making it extremely expensive and difficult to find.

“It’s the most expensive coffee that we know about in the world,” said Jones.

Umm, sorry – that just sounds weird… (well, I’m not exactly a gourmand, so who am I to say? It better be damn good coffee though).

NY Times’ Sewell Chan profiles the NYS mediator, Richard A. Curreri – the man who helped make the transit strike end possible:

IN grade-school baseball and stickball games, while other children stood out for their fleetness of foot, strength of arm and speed of bat, Richard A. Curreri was already becoming known for his skills as a mediator.

“I tended to be the kid they went to to make a decision in normal disputes,” he recalled. “Whether somebody was safe, whether somebody was out – they’d ask me. I don’t know why. For whatever reason, that was my role. Probably I was a better umpire than baseball player.”

Mr. Curreri’s skill at seeing both sides of an argument has served him well at the New York State Public Employment Relations Board, where he is the director of conciliation and played a critical role last week in developing a framework that ended New York City’s first transit strike in a quarter-century.

Mr. Curreri, 53, a mild-mannered public servant with a wry sense of humor, has helped settle scores of labor disputes over the years, including strikes by teachers in Yonkers in 1999 and in Buffalo in 2000. Nothing in his 29 years at the state labor board, however, had approached the fury and intensity of the transit negotiations. [….]

Born in Brooklyn, Mr. Curreri grew up in Valley Stream, on Long Island, and graduated in 1973 from Cornell University, where he studied government. He did not develop an interest in labor relations until his time at Albany Law School.

ONE of his professors there was John E. Sands, who had been a top New York City labor-relations official under Mayor John V. Lindsay. Mr. Sands saw a spark of talent in Mr. Curreri and encouraged him to enter the field.

“He was born to arbitrate and mediate,” Mr. Sands said. “He has a sense of the process – the pragmatics of mediation as an extension of collective bargaining. He just has a natural feel for it. Plus, he can read parties’ real intentions, behind the rhetoric.”

After getting his law degree in 1976, Mr. Curreri joined the Public Employment Relations Board, a small agency created under the Taylor Law of 1967, which forbids public employees to strike.

Mr. Curreri started as an assistant counsel, defending decisions by the board, which makes rulings in complaints about improper labor practices. He also became a protégé of Harold R. Newman, a former union organizer who was chairman of the board from 1977 to 1990 and who died last month at 84. In 1990, Mr. Curreri became director of conciliation, taking a job Mr. Newman held when he helped settle the last New York City teachers’ strike, in 1975.

Pauline Rogers Kinsella, the board’s chairwoman from 1991 to 1998, has a theory for Mr. Curreri’s success. “He has the ability to listen carefully, which is a critical quality in a mediator,” she said. “He does not inject himself into, or make personal, the mediation process.” [….]

It may seem easy to identify what it takes to be a good mediator, but it’s probably harder to carry it out. So Mr. Curreri’s definitely an inspiration here for taking on the mess that the MTA and the union put out. And, maybe alternative dispute resolution should be a tool used more often!

Hilarious, as NY Times’ Adam Liptak reports: Boston U’s Prof. Jay Wexler came up with a law journal article where he analyzed the Supreme Court transcripts and determined who’s the justice who garners the most laughs: Scalia (no surprise – the man’s a wit, as we can tell from his written opinions). The professor concedes that his analysis is hardly accurate, but it’s fun to consider. The other justices are hardly slouches, even if the transcripts don’t quite reflect that, and maybe Ch. J. Roberts may be on the rise as the new ringleader of wit and verbal jousting:

[….] Jay D. Wexler, a law professor at Boston University, was quick to exploit the new data to analyze the relative funniness of the justices. His study, which covers the nine-month term that began that October, has just been published in a law journal called The Green Bag.

Justice Scalia was the funniest justice, at 77 “laughing episodes.” On average, he was good for slightly more than one laugh – 1.027, to be precise – per argument.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer was next, at 45 laughs. Justice Ginsburg produced but four laughs. Justice Clarence Thomas, who rarely speaks during arguments, gave rise to no laughter at all.

Of course, what passes for humor at the Supreme Court would probably not kill at the local comedy club. Consider, for instance, the golden opportunity on Halloween this year when a light bulb in the courtroom’s ceiling exploded during an argument.

It takes two justices, it turns out, to screw up a light bulb joke.

“It’s a trick they play on new chief justices all the time,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who joined the court that month, said of the explosion.

“[Laughter.]”

“Happy Halloween,” Justice Scalia retorted.

“[Laughter.]”

And then, the kicker. “We’re even more in the dark now than before,” Chief Justice Roberts said.

“[Laughter.]”

On the other hand, in a January argument in a statute-of-limitations case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made an amusing observation about the absurdity of modern life.

“Recently I lost my luggage,” Justice Kennedy said. “I had to go to the lost and found at the airline, and the lady said has my plane landed yet.”

“[Laughter.]”

Professor Wexler concedes that his methodology is imperfect. The court reporters who insert the notations may, for instance, be unreliable or biased.

The simple notation “[laughter]” does not, moreover, distinguish between “a series of small chuckles” and “a joke that brought the house down.” Nor, Professor Wexler said, does it separate “the genuine laughter brought about by truly funny or clever humor and the anxious kind of laughter that arises when one feels nervous or uncomfortable or just plain scared for the nation’s future.” [….]

Justice Scalia’s numbers may similarly overstate his wit, if only because the courtroom expects quips from him and may laugh at the least provocation. Also, he tried hard.

“He plays to the crowd,” said Pamela S. Karlan, a Stanford law professor and Supreme Court advocate who has garnered her own share of laughter notations in the transcripts.

Sometimes, the laughter that apparently filled the courtroom is hard to comprehend. Chief Justice Roberts, for instance, got a laugh for this observation at an October argument on assisted suicide: “The relationship between the states and the federal government has changed a little since Gibbons v. Ogden,” a landmark decision in 1824 about national regulation of the economy.

Lawyers get laughs sometimes, too, but it is a dangerous business. In the guidebook the court provides to lawyers preparing to argue before it, there is this stern warning: “Attempts at humor usually fall flat.”

Thomas C. Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who appears before the court frequently, said humor “is a land mine.”

“You have to follow the justices’ lead,” Mr. Goldstein said. “You have to be a straight man.”

Lawyers confuse one justice with another surprisingly often, and those mix-ups are, of course, an opportunity for humor.

Last November, Sri Srinivasan, a government lawyer, apologized to Justice David H. Souter for referring to him as Justice Scalia.

“Thank you,” Justice Souter said, with characteristic self-deprecation, “but apologize to him.”

“[Laughter.]”

The New York Times, building on Professor Wexler’s pioneering work, analyzed the available transcripts for the term that began this October. The mood under Chief Justice Roberts has brightened, the analysis found, with the average number of justice-generated laughs per argument rising to 2.9 from 2.6 the previous term.

In the current term, the Times analysis found, there has also been movement in the funniness-of-individual-justices department. Justice Breyer has taken the lead, at 28 laughs, edging out Justice Scalia, with 25. They also tied in the largest-number-of-jokes-in-a-single-argument category, each squeezing five into a single hour.

Chief Justice Roberts made a strong early showing, coming in third, with 13.

“It looks like he’ll be competitive,” Professor Wexler said in an interview.

Justice Clarence Thomas continues to bring up the rear, with what is shaping up to be another jokeless term for him. [….]

So, there will be much to look forward to in the new year. Winter Olympics. A new Supreme Court Justice. NYS Gubernatorial and attorney general elections. And so on. Happy New Year everybody (in case I don’t post again before 2006). Peace and good will and all that good stuff. And, hmm, let’s see how those resolutions will hold or not… 😉