September Continues

Fell behind on stuff.

I did see “The Informant!” on Sunday — Matt Damon is terribly amusing, but it’s a weird feeling to realize that the way to portray corporate malfeasance and one man’s financial corruption is via comedy. Damon showed how his character was so average, yet clever, and mentally ill (probably). Scott Bakula as the good FBI agent was pretty cool. Steven Soderbergh (and producer George Clooney) had a whole bunch of people in the movie, even the Smothers Brothers.

Sam Yoon didn’t exactly get to go forward in the Boston mayoral race, but he seemed to have a decent showing. At least there’s progress f or APA candidates o the east coast.

Lack of sleep doesn’t help the immune system. Hmmm…

A little frightening to think that McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish might have caused serious fish problems.

Well, isn’t this exciting: Monet at MoMA!

Meanwhile, William Blake at the Morgan — weird stuff, that bloke.

This whole celebration of NYC’s Dutch past is a bit more than I thought – somehow feeling a bit superficial and wistful – and trying to be deep – all at once. Some exhibition, something over at Governor’s Island, Vermeer at the Met, and “Dutch New York” on Channel 13.

Fall preview of the coming season of “How I Met Your Mother”…

That season premiere was pretty good. Except… Ted’s supposed to be an architecture instructor at Columbia. And, they did throw in some exterior shots of the Columbia campus. But, the scene where Ted is running through campus to get to the correct classroom clearly has Ted in a Californian campus (viewers on one of the bulletin boards on-line say it’s either UCLA, USC, and I kind of thought it looked a lot like Stanford). Plus, no, the buildings at Columbia are not named as “Building No. 5.” As a Columbia alumnus, I was a little disappointed about that. Otherwise, thought it was cool that “Barnman and Robin” will be in their version of a relationship.

The season premiere of “Fringe” was entertaining — although, I’m not all that pleased with what they did to Charlie, the FBI agent who was Olivia’s friend. It was a J.J. Abrams-redux thing, really, and I do wonder whether this will just about crush Olivia’s spirit – to harm her FBI friend like that.

And the boss, Broyles, with an unusual sort-of romance with the mysterious Nina Sharp? I kind of called that last season – they had some amusing chemistry vibes and I’m glad “Fringe” would touch on that.

I didn’t watch the season premiere of “Heroes.” Television Without Pity covers the storylines that “Heroes” dropped the ball on. Those reasons — well, the whole dropping the ball on Claude and Lindermann and the alternate universe of Plague — along with what they did to Nathan last season are why I can’t watch this show anymore. You have to respect your characters; you have to come to a proper resolution to your stories, or you just have a pretty show to watch, but not much of a show. Just saying, that’s all.

Post-Primary Day

I voted on Primary Day; did you?

There will be a runoff between John Liu and David Yassky in the NYC Comptroller race. John Liu could be the first Asian-American elected to citywide office. Disclaimer: I had Yassky as a prof back in law school. Further disclaimer: I’m not going to mention who I voted for.

There will be a runoff between Bill De Blasio and Mark Green in the NYC Public Advocate race.

I don’t live in New York County, so I didn’t vote in the DA election across the river. Cyrus Vance, Jr., won; there will be a new DA in NY county, ending the Morganthau era. Funny, Vance doesn’t look like Sam Waterston’s Jack McCoy… (never mind; silly joke).

At least three city councilmen have been ousted, including Alan Gerson of lower Manhattan (the district covering Chinatown) who lost to Margaret Chin. More Asians will be representing NYC in city council.

Prof. Peter Kwong answers questions on the City Room Blog of the NY Times on the gentrification of Chinatown.


WQXR will be in a new radio frequency, moving from 96.3 to 105.9
. I’m not big on change; it is weird that WNYC bought WQXR.

Change in NYC. Ah well.