Category: Manhattan

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.