Category: Manhattan

Something to get us through the week – a long, hopefully fun post!

Last year, I watched the March of the Santas through Central Park. It wasn’t until later that I learned that this was Santacon, where lots and lots of people dress up in Santa suits or elves suits (plus, as I remembered it, one Hanukah Harry in blue) to drink, be merry, go carousing and stuff. From what I saw, yeah, okay, they might have been a bit tipsy and public urination’s not a nice thing to do in Central Park, but the masses of Santas were pretty much cool and merry (not harming kids or dogs or whatnot).

This YouTube video of Santacon 2006 in NYC pretty much shows the (excess drinking but otherwise merry) Santacon.

Although, according to the blog posting on the NY Times’ City Room, Sewell Chan managed to find a source who admitted that Santacon’s not exactly – umm… for the saintly side of St. Nick. Naughty!

Postings on YouTube of Santacon NYC 2007 will probably be up already. Hmm…

A NYC thing indeed: the story behind those mosaics in the East Village.

Trying to decide what charity to donate? NY Times has the article to help make sense of it in the food section this week!

NY Times’ Peter Meehan with a nicely written review of a noodle place on East Broadway. I’m not a noodle person, but his nicely written descriptions made me hungry.

NY Times’ Mark “The Minimalist” Bittman does truffles. Mmm! The accompanying video makes it look so easy (he says you can’t screw it up; although, I imagine that getting crappy chocolate and using skim milk instead of cream would make one a sucky truffle-maker), and in the column, he discusses various variations on the truffle.

The story of Scrabulous, the Facebook addiction application (umm, yeah, that’d be me too – too fun!).

And, in sports… the Rangers and the Knicks are roommates at MSG, but who are the real New Yorkers? (and, anyway, the Rangers are currently doing pretty well, unlike the Knicks: Go Rangers!! Heck, they take the subway to get around town!).

Thanks to FC and P for the birthday gift!

The big 3-0 was spent very low-key. Birthday gift to myself – a few days away from the office.

Have I actually cleaned anything up, done real reading, or gotten much (fiction) writing done? Not really. Got some art stuff out of the way. Relaxed. Spent a few hours with a friend.

Daily News’ feature “Big Town, Big Dreams” – profiling NYC immigrants who make big contributions – profiles Tisa Chang, founder of the Pan Asian Repertory Theater. I had watched a performance they had done, and sorry to have missed their just finished production of “The Joy Luck Club.”

The passing of 1010 WINS’ former financial commentator, Larry Wachtel, most known for his closing line, “Gather those rosebuds,” and his thick Brooklyn accent. I remembered thinking, “Man, got to love that accent,” and never quite understanding the whole rosebuds thing – but that’s the beauty of NYC indeed.

Ex-Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley, has been accepted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now, I know by rights, as a Brooklynite, I’m supposed to despise the O’Malleys for taking the Dodgers out of Brooklyn, but then again, I really can’t waste my energy on that, can I? He did make baseball history, whether you call him villain or not; it was not illegal; he was famous; Hall of Fame, right? Unlike, say, Pete Rose or even those tainted by the steroids scandal, O’Malley was the smart businessman (and an attorney). Love him or hate him, he’ll be at Cooperstown.

Law.com posts a profile (from the Fulton County Daily Report) of Sean Carter, legal humorist (whose past columns on the ABA E-Journal were some items I had linked in the past).

Watched Grey’s Anatomy last night – an actually decent episode. Meredith seems to finally get some things figured out; Chief Weber was the one person to be proud of her and say he was impressed – something she couldn’t get from her real parents; Christina railed at Bailey for making her help her with a white supremacist (guess Christina didn’t like being picked on as the Asian/Jewish person; as much as I wouldn’t like it either, she picked a bad time to rail at Bailey, whose marriage is crumbling and it wasn’t like Bailey wanted to treat the white supremacist either); Alex’s love life is messed up as usual; George and Izzy finally realize that they shouldn’t be together; and Lexie … well, seems to me that of the Grey (half) sisters, Lexie may be a fine doctor, but is she really going to cut it as a surgeon? I haven’t watched much of the season, but I feel like I really haven’t missed much, although it felt like real Grey’s Anatomy finally.

As noted in past posts, I’ve been all excited about the Seurat exhibit at MoMA. Went to MoMA tonight – saw the Georges Seurat exhibit. So cool! The on-line exhibit is also amazing. Highly recommended (but I’m biased, as I am a Seurat fan).

The Met re-opened its European galleries, and it sounds terrific, going by the review of NY Times critic Holland Cotter.

It’s not looking too good for the writers’ strike ending; we need a holiday miracle now!

On a serious note: on Tuesday, I had attended the tail end of the NYS/NYC Bar Associations’ rally at 60 Centre Street in support of the Pakistani bar’s situation, the event of which I had noted in a previous blog post. I’m not exactly sure of the media’s coverage of City Bar’s approach (Sewell Chan of the NY Times did blog it and there’s this article by Winter Miller of the NY Times – she actually took down comments from me, but I didn’t think it’d have amounted to much and it didn’t wind up in the article, understandably); NY Law Journal’s has quite the article (well, its job is to cover the local bar). Newsday, but not Daily News or Post? Guess I have to check the real newspapers to be sure. I did check Google – 34 articles on-line? Not bad! Well, it was just great to see NYC lawyers taking time to rally in support of rule of law and for colleagues who are trying to keep it alive in their country.

Not as serious stuff:

My National Novel Writing Month novel is slogging along. Some 20,000 odd words, and I’m not really sure how to go from Plot Point A to Plot Point B. My descriptions and settings are sucky. Dialog’s kind of funny at least, but this isn’t a screenplay or script. Arrgh. This is going to be quite the first draft.

Matt Damon’s People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” for this year, making his quote to the powers of People Magazine Time’s quote of the day: “You gave an aging suburban dad the ego boost of a lifetime.” Congratulations, Mr. Damon!

Monday TV:

“How I Met Your Mother” was quite timely – being November, it was time for Marshall to go on-line and check his NYS bar results (good lord, who on the writing people behind HIMYM is the former lawyer to know these true-to-life lovely details? I hope they’re on strike to get the credit they richly deserve – the accuracy of Marshall going crazy over not knowing whether he passed was too real). Only, Marshall can’t find his password to log in and he doesn’t want to wait for the mailed results (or check NY Law Journal? Come on, Marshall!). And, Ted goes crazy once he finds out why his friends don’t like his new girlfriend (they point out The Flaw), which leads Ted to point out Lily’s Flaw… which ultimately leads to Marshall remembering his password and finding that he indeed passed the bar. Let’s give a warm welcome to the newest member of the (fictitious) bar!

Hmm. I wonder if they’ll do an episode where Marshall has to deal with the Character and Fitness committee. Come on – they got to show that! There’s a sitcom plot to mine from that scenario; you can have Barney (played by the scene-stealing Neil Patrick Harris, ex-Doogie Howser), or Lily to mess up Marshall.

Saw some of NBC’s “Chuck” – wherein Chuck and his fellow CIA colleagues have to capture and cure themselves of toxic truth serum. Toxic truth serum maker was played by Kevin Weissman, who previously played dear Marshall Flinkman, the tech guy of “Alias.” Aww, Marshall – you’re a bad guy? At least on “Alias,” Marshall didn’t realize that he was on the Side of Evil (’cause he was working for SD6 thinking it was part of the CIA, only it wasn’t, and then he joined the real CIA, but he was still scared of Sloane, ’cause Sloane was Evil)… Oh, well. Pretty interesting episode; not sure if I’d be a “Chuck” watcher, but it’s a decent show.

“Heroes” – major episode explaining what happened “four months ago” – that is, the events that occurred right after the last season finale and explaining this season’s premiere. Skip this if you don’t want spoilers….

— Considering the slow pace of this season, this gave good explanations. I’m still bored with the Latin American twins, but at least they showed how Maya has something of a nasty streak in her personality (which intrigues me, because I haven’t bought her “I’m the Poor Victim” personality at all and her befriending Sylar is creepy…). Her brother’s still a boring irritation. Peter has his memory back, but really… who is “Adam” supposed to be? Good/evil? Just amoral? The actor David Anders was “Sark” on “Alias,” so you never know… Plus, Kristen Bell, former Veronica Mars, played up her character’s psychotic mutant very well (this character is soo NOT tough-but-moral Veronica). I still don’t care for Nikki, but sad that her husband went the way he did.

… end of spoilers…