Category: Manhattan

I slept most of the day on Sunday, just catching up after two whirlwind days.

Friday night I was invited back to the 25th anniversary of an Asian fashion/culture show that I ran back in college. There was about 50 alums from ranging from the beginning in the late 80s to today. I actually ended up in a photo that ran with an article in the World Journal. Many things were still the same as they were 15 years ago, but the show has also matured and is so much more professional than we ever could imagine.

Saturday spent 3 hours with P’s friends from high school at vegetarian Kosher restaurant Buddha Bodai. Dim sum choices very good. Later, was invited to a dinner buffet at Tavern on the Green, and then a birthday party at the Gatehouse.

Plenty of stuff to do this week…

A Q & A with writer Diane Wei Lang, who was a professor of business in the US and the UK and now lives in the UK – and has two mystery novels (setting Beijing) coming out. (interesting trend – Chinese mystery novelists – well, I know at least of Qiu Xiaolong anyway).

We have a museum dedicated to the police of NYC, to the firefighters of NYC, a NYC transit museum – and now, there’s an exhibit on the sanitation workers of NYC at NYU… curiously interesting.

The passing of the inventor of the Egg McMuffin – Herb Peterson.

Thought this was a nice article on the teahouses of NYC by Seth Kugel. Tea and Sympathy‘s just lovely (despite the tightness of space and following the rules, it’s so worth it!). Franchia‘s pretty cool (so I recalled, anyway). So love tea, and wish I had the money to do more teahouses.

“Lost” — interesting episode, as it fills in a missing gap in the saga of “Lost.” Well, still don’t quite understand what happened with young Walt, but that’s probably for another time.

“Law and Order” — uh, yeah, weird episode. Christians Taking Righteousness Too Far. Cutter tries to prosecute. McCoy sighs. Hmm. I know, I know – I can’t expect “L&O” to go into characters too much (if at all) when the show’s really about plot (or, rather, Ripped From the Headlines), but really, sometimes I’d like to say to the characters of “L&O”: who are you and why do you care about this situation? Cutter seems to be about Law and Order – or rather, getting the conviction – but isn’t it more than that?

Plus, the cops Green and Lupo seemed a little duller than usual in this episode, although I’d have thought they’d be a little perturbed by the case’s weirdness. Frankly, I’d be a little nauseous about 10 year old Christian zealot yelling at me for being a sinner (meanwhile the kid’s an accessory to murder? Uh…). Considering the weak writing, I think it was a little obvious that the episode was the last one in the can before the writers’ strike came down.

The “L&O” episode also had a mini-“Kidnapped” reunion, in bringing Will Denton (who played the kidnap victim on that canceled NBC series) as a guest star – but no big scenery chewing with either Jeremy Sisto (the rogue detective of “Kidnapped”) or Linus Roache (the rogue FBI agent from “Kidnapped”). (oh, and the Universal HD channel has been airing those canceled episodes of “Kidnapped” of late – kind of an interesting show, but I could see why it got canceled).

Plus, playing the defendant on “L&O” – a creepy pastor who had his role in producing the juvenile Christian zealots who kill people – was Sean Astin, the former Rudy from “Rudy” and the former Sam from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

No new “Lost” or “L&O” until April, though, due to the writers’ strike.

NCAA basketball – oh-kay: my brackets are looking a little ragged. In the East region, I had Winthrop as my Cinderella into the Sweet 16; goodbye, Winthrop. I also had Indiana at least into the second round; again, too bad. In the Midwest region, I had USC into the Sweet 16; Vanderbilt and Gonzaga into the second round; bye-bye. The South region’s still okay, but not the West – Duke, Drake, and U.Conn – bye. I had a feeling that Duke wouldn’t have made it, but thought The NCAA Powers That Be knew what they were doing by ranking Duke so high; who were they kidding?

Serious stuff:

YC beat me to it in posting on the Taiwan elections. I’m no follower of Taiwan politics, but it’s fascinating stuff. Plus, I had been wondering if the Tibet developments had any effect.

Speaking of Tibet – in Time magazine this week: Pico Iyer has an fascinating look at how the Dalai Lama has been grappling the recent Chinese-Tibet tensions. Quite a read.

This was a fascinating excerpt of the video-blogged conversation between John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute, left, and Glenn Loury of Brown University on the meaning of Barack Obama’s speech.

I also thought that Joe Klein’s column in Time about Obama’s speech was also interesting – the real question is: are people (the media, the voters, the People) willing to hear complex questions?

Last, but not least: John Dean (yes, that John Dean), who admires the intellectual heft that Obama brought in the recent speech on race, posits that people might prefer their presidents to pretend (or actually be) not that intelligent. I thought Dean’s closing paragraphs were eloquent:

Let’s hope that Senator Obama continues to be willing to publicly perform at his intelligence level. Perhaps he will trust voters to realize that the key criterion to serve in the highest office should not be which candidate is the person with whom you would most enjoy having a beer. To the contrary, presidents should not be encouraging C students to continue to earn Cs so they can become president. Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better – which is one of the core points in Obama’s message.

Anti-intellectual Republican presidents have led this nation into a new age of unreason, as former Vice President Al Gore argued in The Assault on Reason (2007) and more recently, Susan Jacoby has reported in The Age of Unreason (2008). As Senator Obama campaigns, he can truly change America by simply refusing to play dumb. That strategy, if Obama continues it, may turn out to be not only courageous but also wise, for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.

In the span of a week, P and I went to two epic concerts at Madison Square Garden — last Tuesday with the Foo Fighters, and last Thursday with Linkin Park. We got tickets for both shows for Christmas. While both of these Grammy winning bands have been around for more than a decade each, these were their first times playing at MSG. Both groups acted like they had gotten to the final gig on Guitar Hero II, peering down from the pinnacle in awe at the sellout crowds of over 19,000 people.

While P- is the one that tracks their albums and playlists on the radio at work, I kind of just know their “sound” – the Foo’s being the inheritors of Seattle alternative, and Linkin Park being fusion scientists, mashing up rap, rock and techno, while not being afraid of being harmonic. Of course we here have to recognize a band with two Asian American members (DJ Joe Hahn and MC Mike Shinoda).

Foo Fighters took out all the stops for their fans, going for 2 hours without intermission, bringing for the first ever in MSG a “triangle solo”.

Their encore began with a wonderful acoustic version of “Big Me”, which has become my odds on favorite for wedding song. They had a secondary stage in the back of the hall connected by a long thin runway so that the people in the “cheap seats” could get up close to them.

Linkin Park designed their stage in the round, and the band members rotated around so that the people in the “obstructed” back seats had intimate views. Of course, the crowd was looking for their seminal rap-rock songs, such as “In the End”. However, their latest stuff, such as “In Pieces”, really grew on me. They held two encores, interspersed with dark waits, causing spectators to yo-yo to and from the exits. The second encore merited a surprise guest appearance by Jay-Z, who came out of retirement to perform songs such as “Numb” from their mash up album.

We’ll be getting the live albums/DVDs for both of these events when they come out.

Sunday we went to a friend’s house for the traditional Oscar party. P- won the night with 16 correct picks, besting actual Entertainment Weekly magazine staff members at the party, which earned her a screenwriter’s script for “Juno”. Viewership was down because of a combination of a generally lackluster field and the writer’s strike aftermath, but I thought that Jon Stewart did an excellent job hosting the show. This time around, he actually was in charge. Not just for his general wittiness, and the fact that he got the show done with 10 minutes to spare, but he had the presence of mind to bring back Marketa Irglova to the stage to let her speak after she was cut off by the orchestra.

Watching the Oscars as of this writing. Jon Stewart’s pretty funny so far; the writers are doing well!

Time’s Joel Stein invites George Clooney to his house for dinner. George Clooney, former contractor, helps out by looking for the source of a beeping sound in the house… Well, either way, George Clooney’s still The Man!

This past week’s “Law and Order” – an interesting episode, but glaring plotholes. Some thoughts from the episode, in the order that the thing appeared in the episode:

So far as I can tell, the episode isn’t quite ripped-off-the-headlines, unless one counts the Real Life US Supreme Court’s future decision on death penalty by injection. (well, the S. Ct’s decision to hear oral arguments came sometime late last year, so it might have been around the time that they made the episode, I’m guessing).

Anyway, about the plot:

doctor visiting NYC is murdered; matter of mistaken identity – the wrong doctor was murdered, and it’s connected to a botched death penalty case in South Carolina;

Detective Lupo flirts with the girl at the South Carolina hotel desk;

Lieutenant Van Buren and D.A. McCoy seem to enjoy ordering their subordinates to hop on down to South Carolina, perhaps to get Lupo/Green/Cutter/Rubirosa from irritating them (well, actually, Cutter seems to both irritate and impress McCoy; can’t tell what kind of reactions the others inspire);

D.A. McCoy argues a point of law in the judge’s chambers because Exec. A.D.A. Cutter suddenly felt that there was an argument he couldn’t argue (which made no sense to me);

anti-death penalty judge allows the defendant to bring in the vegetable brain-damaged convicted killer (victimized by the botch death penalty punishment) as an exhibit in the trial of the defendant who killed the wrong doctor (what? in real NYC, this would have had a media circus coming);

A.D.A. Rubirosa seems to be Cutter’s conscience – it’ll take awhile and she’ll challenge him, but he’ll listen to her and agree to negotiate a plea instead of continuing to prosecute a lousy case;

and last but not least, I still don’t know where Cutter stands on the issue of death penalty because of the not-making sense parts of the episode.

Hmm. Well, at least Jesse L. Martin, Jeremy Sisto, and Linus Roache were all easy on the eyes.

Sat night: dinner with the alumni group at Woo Chon in the stone’s throw of K-town. Some Korean bbq. Delicious food.

Well, speaking of Korean food, kimchi’s being shipped into space, to feed a Korean astronaut. What’ll they think of next?

Weird experiences:

• Met a Survivor. Turns out he’s a real nice guy.
• Got mistaken for a waiter (maybe it was because I was wearing a tux).
• Witnessed a cugine making several faux pas in a sushi restaurant, such as trying to order drinks from the sushi chef, but otherwise having a good time.
• Realizing the said cugine lived down the street in the old neighborhood and went to school with my sister.

Places eaten out this week:

Cantoon Garden,  22 Elizabeth Street, Manhattan. Good when not rushed.

New York Marriott Marquis Times Square. Banquet services were good, if pricey.

Mura, 369 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn. Recommended

Kim Paris Vietnamese Grill, 128 Montague Street, Brooklyn. Lunch menu excellent value.

Fresco Tortilla Court Street, 113 Court Street, Brooklyn. G0od cheap Tex-Mex made by Chinese people.

Well, certainly on Wednesday and Thursday morning, Lower Manhattan still had pieces of confetti strewn here and there along Broadway or on Wall Street from what I saw. Yet, the parade didn’t nearly have the kind of load that past parades had, as NY Times’ Ken Belson and Sewell Chan writes:

Football fans probably don’t see it this way, but by one measure the Giants’ Super Bowl victory on Sunday had less than one-hundredth of the significance of V-J Day, which marked Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II in 1945.

New York City’s Sanitation Department has been compiling statistics on the number of tons of paper collected after each ticker-tape parade, including the one that marched up Broadway on Tuesday for the victorious Giants.

The department’s data point out that parades were far more common in earlier decades, when heads of state and foreign monarchs were often treated to a pageant down the Canyon of Heroes.

In recent years the parades have become largely limited to championship sports teams, with occasional astronauts and returning military troops mixed in.

The Sanitation Department collected 36.5 tons of paper after Tuesday’s parade, compared with 5,438 tons for the celebration of the Allied victory over Japan in August 1945, according to Vito A. Turso, a Sanitation Department spokesman. [….]

Fourth, parades in cold weather tend to have smaller turnout and fewer paper throwers than processions in warmer months. Finally, there may be less paper, or at least less readily available paper, to throw.

Not only is ticker tape no longer in use, but also, even shredded office paper is often taken straight to the recycling bin. When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg urged office workers along Broadway to throw paper out their windows, he even suggested torn-up telephone books.

I thought that NY Times’ Adam Nagourney has some pretty insightful analyses on Super Tuesday’s results:

here, from Wednesday’s paper, he notes, regarding the concern of whether the Democratic campaigns of Clinton v. Obama might go negative:

But the history of their contest — and the sensibilities displayed by Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton — suggests that would not necessarily be the case.

The most bitter period of their campaign was in South Carolina, when Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton repeatedly challenged Mr. Obama’s credentials and credibility. But after signs of backlash, she scaled back, and since then, the two have expressed their differences for the most part with fewer sharp edges. Should that tone continue, this contest may end without the bitterness Republicans were hoping for.

Finally, whatever the passions of Mr. Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s supporters — and by every measure, their passions are about as high as they ever get in politics — Democrats have throughout this year been unified by the intensity of their desire to win back the White House after eight years of President Bush.

And that, more than anything else, may continue to be the best thing Democrats have going as they enter this potentially turbulent period.

I have to say – I hope it doesn’t get negative; we do have to keep a perspective on things and remember that we still have to get to November.

In Thursday’s newspaper, Nagourney writes on how the publicity on Obama is going to have to translate into real votes, and questions whether we have a cultural (generational? philosophical?) shift yet:

But at the end of the day, the task for Mr. Obama may well transcend the demographics or voting blocs that are the brick and mortar of the traditional American campaign. As even Mrs. Clinton’s aides will acknowledge, Mr. Obama has brought a level of excitement and involvement to the campaign trail that few people involved in this contest have seen before. The question is whether he can move them one more step on the electoral process — into voting — in the dwindling number of contests that make up this campaign.

NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley on the tv coverage of Super Tuesday – the weirdness of seeing the pundits and anchors caution on polls and raw vote numbers. Well, I watched the PBS and the ABC coverage. Jim Lehrer steered Mark Shields and David Brooks and the PBS team along. Yeah, so ABC stuck with the coverage because otherwise it had some crappy strike substitutes, but I was kind of charmed by Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer, and George Stephanopoulos doing the coverage almost in an old-fashioned kind of way (well, except for their taking a Facebook perspective of things), and how they kept at it until the wee hours.

Time’s James Poniewozik notes the sad reality that “American Idol” and “House” trounced the news coverage in the ratings. And, true, like he said, can we resist the thought that more Americans “vote” for the American Idol than vote in the real elections?

At least “House” was kind of a pretty good episode. I didn’t really want to watch it, since I as a news junkie wanted to watch news coverage, but my sis insisted on watching “House.” Awesome zingers from Drs. House and Cuddy as they tried to get Dr. Wilson not to date an inappropriate woman. Notably, Cuddy cuts Wilson to shreds by warning him that Amber (aka Dr. Cut-throat-Bitch) would take so much from him, the giver, that he would be just a chalk outline on the ground. If I find the exact quote, I’ll post it. Wilson’s reaction was pretty priceless; Cuddy hit him nasty, even if she’d rather not go along with House in trying to undermine or interfere with the (pathetic) love life of Wilson.

Wednesday Dining: NY Times’ Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman has a blog! “Bitten” look so cool already!

In time for Black History Month: nice article on ESPN.com on Willie O’Ree, who broke the NHL color barrier and continues to advocate for diversity in his sport.

Slate’s Emily Bazelon on how a President Barack Obama may choose the judiciary – and, considering that he’s a former con law prof and has a nifty bunch of law profs advising him — well, one wonders!

In time for Lunar New Year – Time Magazine James Poniewozik notes that the Salesgenie.com Super Bowl ads on the Chinese-accented pandas are being pulled – but not the one with the Indian sales guy. Poniewozik links to the Stuart Elliott article in the NY Times about Salesgenie, and it leads to the question of what do we find offensive in the ads when they exploit stereotypes? I hate ads even more when they’re not good and they’re promoting a product I’d have no use or care for (like I’m going to make sales and need leads).

The passing of former ABC News journalist John McWethy, the former Pentagon correspondent. Kind of poignant that ABC News’ video closed with McWethy and Peter Jennings.

The passing of Joshua Lederberg: Nobel Prize winner, pioneer in the study of genetics, educator, president emeritus of Rockefeller University, Stuyvesant H.S. alumnus, Columbia U alumnus, and so many accomplishments.

Look for the best of luck and good fortune for the Lunar New Year!

I missed out on personally watching the ticker tape parade for the Giants. Yeah, I work three blocks away from the Canyon of Heroes, but my office building faces West Street, with the view of the Hudson River and Jersey. Lots of people were already coming out when I got to work – people in Giant blue in Lower Manhattan – kind of nuts, really.

God, it has been awhile since we had a last parade. A whole Q & A comes in handy!

I did get out during the lunch hour to check out the mess – and it was messy. Ticker tape ain’t what it used to be (well, it technically doesn’t even exist anymore), but some people couldn’t bother to shred paper? Why throw toilet paper? Oh well! But, it’s nice to see happy people.

And, voting. Yes, it’s finally Super (Duper Duper) Tuesday. I voted. We’re living in history.

[Pardon some editing…]

Haven’t been blogging, due to after work events (ah, bar associations…), alumni stuff (ah, Alma Mater Law School has improved on its food provisions, has it?), tummy aches (man, what have I been eating? oh, yeah, that…), and Facebook (umm, yeah).

Time’s Lev Grossman has posted on the Time.com blog, “Nerd World” that Hasbro’s a little pissed with the people behind “Scrabulous.” I agree with Grossman, as he writes: “I just hope Hasbro is smart enough to buy Scrabulous and resuscitate it on a firm legal footing. Because I’ve got a wicked bingo to put down.” I agree – please don’t just scrap “Scrabulous”; negotiate!

Meanwhile, NY Times reports on how, as much as Scrabulous application on Facebook is beloved, other applications on Facebook leave much to be desired. Otherwise, yeah, well, the Scrabble/Scrabulous dispute continues…

Jennifer 8. Lee on the history of the fortune cookie – and how it may not be as Chinese American in origin as believed? Lee writes that, although early Japanese bakeries in America brought the cookie to this side of the Pacific:

Early on, Chinese-owned restaurants discovered the cookies, too. Ms. Yasuko Nakamachi [food historian] speculates that Chinese-owned manufacturers began to take over fortune cookie production during World War II, when Japanese bakeries all over the West Coast closed as Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to internment camps.

[Derrick Wong, the vice president of the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the world, Wonton Food, based in Brooklyn] pointed out: “The Japanese may have invented the fortune cookie. But the Chinese people really explored the potential of the fortune cookie. It’s Chinese-American culture. It only happens here, not in China.”

That sentiment is echoed among some descendants of the Japanese immigrants who played an early role in fortune cookies. “If the family had decided to sell fortune cookies, they would have never done it as successfully as the Chinese have,” said Douglas Dawkins, the great-great-grandson of Makoto Hagiwara [a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s]. “I think it’s great. I really don’t think the fortune cookie would have taken off if it hadn’t been popularized in such a wide venue.”

The accompanying slideshow and video are pretty nifty too. Getting eager about that upcoming book of hers, I must say…

Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman on whole grain pancakes. The accompanying video has a different opening theme music, by the way…

So, how far we go in respecting our food? Pretty far, according to this article on how chef Jamie Oliver and others believe we ought to look our meat in their eyes. I kind of respect the idea; not everyone’s going vegetarian, and while we can’t expect to be 100% humane, getting close to it or at least being aware sounds – well – respectful, to our stomachs and the animals.

Can Eli Manning and the Giants pull it off against Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers this Sunday? “The Mystery of Eli Manning,” on Slate, explores the perennial problem of being the little brother – you’ll be second-guessed, but you might get a little sympathy out of it, so life can’t be that bad. Hopefully.

Friday night: some dinner at Republic on Union Sq. – good eats.

Oh, and it’s Winter 2008 Restaurant Week.

Pete Hamill lecture, sponsored by Downtown Alliance. Not that I had attended the event (although, I wish I did) – but great stuff in the NY Times’ City Room blog – kind of timely, as we think about diversity and tolerance before the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

The passing of Bobby Fischer, chess genius and – to put it kindly – eccentric (the eccentricity probably having been due to many reasons).