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  • To Be Thursday

    Ah, Tuesday and Wednesday – such perfect weather.  Sunshine; not hot; breeze.  Ah…

    Finished reading In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.  Gripping read.  Fantastic writing.   I recommend it.  All kinds of legal and moral questions for the reader to ponder about.  Hmm.  Dare I now watch the movie, “Capote” to get the story behind the book?

    Comics read:

    Funky Winkerbean – has got to be the most depressing comic strip of the soapy-dramedy comic strips out there.  Lisa, the lawyer, has an aggressive recurrence of her breast cancer, and this time, the cartoonist has one really wondering if she’ll make it; so, Lisa and her husband, Les, are heading on vacation (their last?) together, letting their toddler stay with their best friends, and it’s really, really sad.  Mortality is just drawn on their faces.  The cartoonist just loves making his characters suffer (or live life as it is, but I read comics to not feel bad, so come on!).

    Judge Parker – Randy Parker, the judge’s son, is indeed running for his father’s judgeship.  But, this is going to piss off the client, who wants to be the one helping Randy’s campaign and Randy’s going to somehow tell him, “no, I don’t want you to help…” because Randy wants to be his own man in this effort (and has his own friends to help).  Hmm.  This is going to be interesting, since Horace (the client – odd name) is an odd old fuddy duddy (who tried to push Randy to get married to be a better candidate – like, what era do you live in, sir?).  The plot twists have a way of being a bit interesting in this comic strip, and the new cartoonist (who joined forces with the writer of the comic strip) has solid talent (no longer does Randy, Sam, and the rest of the cast look stiff – they look very animated and arty-looking).

    Mary Worth – umm, she’s being stalked.  This guy wants to date her, and won’t take no for an answer.  Scary stuff.

    Annie – Annie, Daddy Warbucks, and the gang are on a mysterious island, where the animals have mutated into huge animals and ate three out of the four stranded scientists.  Umm, that seriously sucks.  The cartoonist’s talented; the script’s a bit lame, though; maybe the Judge Parker writer can help.  Oh, well.

    Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick is in Hawaii for the ABA convention – and covers Justice Kennedy’s speech.  Cool stuff.

    According to Time magazine’s tv critic, Jamie Poniewozik, people prefer fake people over real people in their ads (and in their lives, in all likelihood) – so, they don’t like Daimler Chrysler’s Dr. Z because… they don’t think he’s a great mascot and has a … fake German accent and, well, he’s … real?  Well, I like Dr. Z, I miss Lee Iacocca too.  But, I’m not the sucker buying these cars, so who am I to say?

    Ohmigod – She-Ra on DVD?  What else of my childhood will pop up next?

  • Weekend Roundup

    Hitting 4 out of New York’s 5 boroughs this weekend… I actually published this on Sunday, but I couldn’t get it out of some funky mode…

    Friday: Bought 40 pounds of kal bi (Korean short rib) from Assi Plaza. The stuff comes rock solid. People were doing double takes as we rolled out of the place with the stuff. Since we had an ice chest, we had enough time to go out for dinner.

    We went to Pine Garden Restaurant, 141-43 Northern Blvd., for Korean. It’s a very homey neighborhood place, not like those massive BBQ emporiums such as Kam Gum San. We ordered the Nokcha-yangnyum Galbi for the BBQ, which is black angus rib marinated with the house special green tea sauce. It had a unique sweet taste, and the meat was very lean. We also had Jop Chae and ManDu Goo Yi (pan fried dumplings). Excellent – recommended.

    When we went home, P made a big pot of chilli for the picnic the next day – that took about 3 hours before we went to sleep.

    Saturday: We went to Costco with a bunch of other people from Asian Alumni associations. We walked out of there with $1,000 worth of picnic stuff – 5 shopping carts. Kalbi, fish balls and the chilli were a big hit. We’ll have to cut out more hamburgers and get more drinks though. And NYU wins the tug-of-war for the first year.

    That night, I spent a couple of hours to get rid of the kim chee smell out of the back of the zip car. Wow, that stuff gets really ripe. Note to self: kim chee gets really dangerous when it gets warm – the active cultures puts off a lot of gas that causes the bottle to leak.

    Sunday: Tiger Beer sponsored a Singapore Chili Crab festival in Brooklyn DUMBO – I had two plates this year. The sauce was much milder and more coconut flavored this year, which I preferred. We then made a b-line to P’s sisters place near the GW bus station to walk the doggies. We got them a snow-cone (without flavor) which they really enjoyed.

    Later we went to Galapogos Art Center in Williamsburg to see the Sulu Series, a monthly menagerie of Asian American performing artists curated by Reggie Cabico from NYU APA. It featured a number of spoken word acts, guitarists, and a rapper that needed an audience to film his new music video.

    We went because of Wendy Ip, who was performing and was by far the best act. Wendy’s song “Our Little Room” is now my current favorite. I though she had great technique on keyboard and original lyrics – completely different than everybody else with the sterotypical lone guitar strapped around their necks. She’s something between Carole King and Carole Bayer Sager. I think it was in an interview between Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello where Bacharach said “you don’t have to apologize for being harmonic”. No apologies – Wendy Ip is Recommended.

    Afterwards, we went to Fornino, Michael Aylub’s pizza laboratory down the street and around the corner. Brickoven pizza with organic ingredients works well. Herbs are grown in the back yard, so it is as fresh as it could be. It is slightly thicker than the only other pizza in Brooklyn in the same league, Grimaldi’s. Score: toppings better at Fornino, bread better at Grimaldi’s. Fornino has more room for seating, doesn’t have lines around the block and takes credit cards, which are some points in their favor. So overall, a slight edge to Fornino. However, Grimaldi’s is within walking distance from the house. Both recommended.

  • Weekend Rundown!

    So, what have we got?

    – BBQ – soo much meat. I don’t think I’ve eaten that much meat. Bee-yoo-ti-ful weather. A nice subway ride to the Bronx (passing by Yankee Stadium, I realized that I really do go to that many more Met games; I really so don’t make trips to the Bronx, so at least the annual picnic is an excuse to make a trek) – love how MTA makes it possible to have basically only one subway going out of my end of Brooklyn, and then only local all the way up. Eh. At least I got air conditioning and a seat and – seeing how the subway really does seem like the only place where I read books anymore, thus I am now more than halfway through In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote.

    Oh, and by the way – the kal bi – great marinade. Bit rare for my preference (I like my meat well-done), but still tasty. The hamburger, the chicken-turkey burger, the hot dog — okay, I had more than my fair share of protein. Thanks again for the ride back to Bklyn, FC and P – and you two really did a great job with the food!

    A great lyrical and enlightening summer read, which I finished this weekend – The Planets by Dava Sobel. If you’re into planets, as I have been, this is a highly recommended book.

    Finally watched “A Fish Called Wanda” off of my tapes – not nearly as laugh-out-loud-funny as I had long hoped, but very entertaining nonetheless, as the plot twists are absolutely head-spinning. George “leads” a band of theives; Ken (fantastically played by ex-Monty-Python Michael Palin) is the stutterer/animal lover thief; Wanda (played by Jamie Lee Curtis) is George’s girlfriend/thief; Otto (played by Kevin Kline) is ex-CIA (who’s too stupid to actually be ex-CIA, but eh…) and joins the band as “Wanda’s brother” (uh-huh, sure); and Archie Leach (great name! coincidentally – or not?! – Cary Grant’s real name; Leach the character is played by fellow-Monty-Python John Cleese) is George’s barrister, who also falls for Wanda – and ah, that Wanda – she manages to wrap all the men in her fingers…

    Personally, I really enjoyed Palin – never realized that he was this good a comedic actor (ok, basically I’ve only seen some of the Monty Python stuff and his trips around the world documentaries, so what do I really know?). Cleese is always consistent. The movie pretty much stands up to the test of time, and well, gee, there really is a difference in how British lawyers and American lawyers practice law… Well, whether this will be a keeper in the SSW collection remains to be seen…

  • Belated YC B-day

    Belated B-day to YC, whose birthday was on Saturday. Survive the trip! Thanks for all of what you do for Triscribe, and hope that you had plenty of good eats.

  • 4 Airline hop skip and jump

    CI, SQ, PK, MH, includes a 6 hour layover in KLIA. The final destination is Islamabad. Amazing how many flight permutations there are to get there. Some go through Dubai and double back (!!! :-o). Some via Beijing. There’s a direct from Tokyo via TK. No one goes back via how they came. Amazing stuff. It makes me think that I can nail Amazing Race if given the chance. Wonder how one can sign up for it…. There’s a prize right?

    Hope you folks had a good picnic and with more comfortable weather. Summer there hasn’t been so bad but then, I’m back in A/C environs with a typical corporate desk job.

    Last trip back from Malaysia was good. I stayed at the KL Hilton for the conference instead of the Le Meridien. Good but I like Meridien better, more comfortable all around. We tried out their steak place called Prime which served all the traditional style cuts etc. They even had Australian Wagyu Beef which appears to be more common in some of the high end steak places in Asia. Friday night at a friend’s farewell to Taiwan party, we went to Robin’s Grill which also had it but at extremely pricey pricey prices :-o. I’ll have to go back and do the Wagyu beef at some point in time with some Joseph Phelps “Le Mistral”, a fabulous fabulous fabulous red. I think even better than the Duckhorn that I’ve had in the past.
    Good food… that’s what’s important. Now just missing the good friends in Asia to join me in this passion!

  • When the heat breaks

    That smell — the earthy, muddy, pungent smell. 5 minutes later, a torrental downpour rages, breaking the scorching heat, steaming, sizzling on the sidewalk then turning into rivers clearing the gutters and the sky. An hour later, it stops, dropping the temperature 20 degrees. What a relief!

    Today, shopping for the picnic tomorrow. Lots and lots of stuff!

  • Heat Wave!… Continues!… Woe!

    When NYC landmarks are voluntarily cutting back on lights because of the latest heatwave, well, it’s a pretty big sign that this is pretty bad. Hmm. I’m really feeling like I ought to heed Al Gore and other environmentalists…

    Probably related to my having read C.S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters” (see my previous blog entry), I just finished reading Elaine Pagels’ “The Origins of Satan.” Very readable, fascinating book on the social history of the idea of Satan, a.k.a. the Prince of Darkness, a.k.a. Lucifer, a.k.a. the fallen angel, a.k.a. the one who opposes or makes obstacles. Judeo-Christian history keeps repeating, but with variations, in how how one group demonizes the other group, whether it’s trashtalking the subgroup (such as when early Christians broke away from Judaism, or when later early Christians opposed easrly so-called heretics and established as canon the accepted Gospels as we know them today; language of debate and opposition that became the vocabulary for further division during the Reformation and so forth), or making scapegoats or total enemies of the outsiders (Christians vs. Jews; Christians vs. the polytheistic pagans; etc.).  It makes wonder if society will finally learn its lessons, or again, repeat habits in variations.
    There’s this informercial out there that I get a real kick out of watching – no, not the Greg Brady “Get the 70’s Music Collection!” (which is also quite campy, I must say, just for having Greg Brady); it the informercial for the 80’s Gold music collection, with Rick Springfield (once also of “General Hospital,” I believe!) of the hit “Jessie’s Girl” in place of Greg Brady.  Rick doesn’t have Greg Brady’s campy pizzazz (Rick seems way too serious in saying “And I know music…”), but the music – good stuff.  Made me almost want to pick up the phone and call… (no, not going that way; but they actually have a webpage – good grief!).
    Have I ever said that I love the air conditioned subways? Really, I do. Forgive me for all my criticism, MTA, I’m at least grateful for the AC. (just not grateful for the oven conditions of the subway platforms).

  • Fantasia

    Blog postings have been a little sparse, mostly because my laptop is on the fritz. There’s something up with the trackpad – I have to keep my hand near the pad or the computer freezes until I put it back.

    Finished the book “What Would the Founders Do?”, which offers insights into what would the founders of the United States really do if faced with the issues of today. Does Scalia’s vision of “original intent” jive with what the written record reveals? Turns out that they had actually thought about things like weapons of mass destruction (items contaminated with measles), terrorism (Barbary States pirates), intelligent design (Franklin was against) and term limits (George Washington). Some critics on Amazon complain that the book could have been more detailed, but it would miss the mission of being a more lighter, general-reading book. Not bad.

    Cool Food TV shows: Road Tasted (Paula Dean’s sons drive around the country – New York Italian episode was pretty good). Bobby Flay Throwdown got the chili champ to give up some secrets – light brown sugar. Alton Brown Feasting on Asphalt – lots of eating stuff that is really bad for you. The trick with the pull-down map going up like a windowshade revealing the site in question is slick.

    Check out the delicious bar on the right – I’ll be adding links in the fly as a “micro blog” of what I am doing. News becoming discouraging – what part of “Thou shall not kill” did these people Going to keep it inside for heatwave #2. My home AC is just not cutting it during this 100 degree weather.

  • It’ll only get hotter now…

    Today wasn’t too bad – hitting 90-odd degrees F, although the so-called real feel temperature was some 5 to 7 degrees more. Otherwise, I took my sort-of vacation, without leaving town…
    –> Saw “Superman Returns” yesterday. Okay movie. Well done, in that art-y sense, evoking memories of the Christopher Reeve series. Major spoilers from here on, although note that I won’t discuss actual plot so much as it relates to my opinion; if you don’t want to know, just scroll on down…

    So, anyway, Kevin Spacey clearly enjoyed himself as Lex Luthor. Very eee-vil. Parker Posey as his moll Kitty – aww, she has a sort-of conscience after all, in the tradition of past Luthor-twisted sidekicks.

    Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane – she had the requisite moxie of Lois. More “issues,” since she had to deal with (what else?) the return of Superman. The return of Clark Kent – well, apparently that’s not an issue for her (poor Clark!).

    James Marsden as Richard White, Perry White’s nephew and Lois’ erstwhile fiance – showed some moxie too. Impressive, considering that Superman’s been the Guy of Lois’ life. Considering that he got shafted as Cyclops in the third X-Men movie, he should feel a little vindicated. (yeah, Cyclops, the love of your life kind of treated you as badly as Lois treated Clark, so don’t feel so bad!).

    Brandon Routh as Superman/Clark Kent – well, he did okay. Felt like he had to pay homage to Christopher Reeve, which I don’t have a problem, but Routh gave no sense of making the character his own or displaying actual acting talent (well, sort of, but not nearly as much as I’d like).

    For me, it felt like this: Clark was put off on the wayside in favor of Superman/Kal-El – except to Ma Kent, for whom Clark/Kal-El/whoever is and always will be her son – it’s like there is no Clark – Clark is just the secret identity for Superman/Kal-El, long-lost son of Krypton, not vice versa. Superman II or III (or was it IV? It’s been sooo long since I last saw them) had pretty much addressed or resolved the Clark v. Superman/Kal-El issue; even “Smallville” of WB (soon-to-be CW) makes it clear that you can’t have Superman without the aw-shucks, all-middle American values of Clark Kent (who is as much the product of Pa Kent than Marlon-Brando as Jor El, who ironically is voiced in “Smallville” by the actor who played a bad guy in the Reeve Superman movies).

    Maybe it’s just me, but I thought by now we’d realize that Clark becomes Superman; Superman can’t exist without Clark. Even the old Teri Hatcher/Dean Cain “Lois and Clark” series made it clear: Clark is the one with the dreams of journalism and fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way (or as this new movie put it “Truth, Justice and the other stuff” – check out a recent NY Times Op-Ed about that issue – we’re kind of losing sight of Superman’s motto, I’m afraid). Only Lois is clueless not to see that Clark’s a good guy (geez, there’s got to be a reason that Jimmy Olsen cared about Clark, after all).

    Ultimately, there’s more to Clark/Superman/Kal-El than the Kryptonite (which the movie made every opportunity to point out, in a pretty heavy-handed way).  At some points, the CGI made Superman look a little wax-statue-y, but, special effects are what they are.
    Oh, well – I do take my superhero stuff a little too seriously (then again, I’m more of a Batman kind of girl – there’s so much angst coming out of a superhero who’s too aware of his personal flaws; Batman doesn’t need Kryptonite to make him collapse considering the extent of his problems). I believe a planned Justice League cartoon movie will finally address the rather twisted relationship between Clark Kent/Superman and Bruce Wayne/Batman (they’re friends, really, if only Bruce can get over his problems with trust and psychotic tendencies; and – according to the cartoon series anyway – if Lois can finally realize Clark is the man, not Bruce, but Bruce is too easy a catch, as the millionare playboy (with hidden serious problems); well, there is that Wonder Woman thing, but this is again why the two guys will be rivals and friends for quite awhile).
    –> Oh, and for today – heat index be damned; I took in the ambiance of NYC, feeling like a tourist. Okay, not really, but it was nice to enjoy time on my own. Window shopped at Saks Fifth Ave and FAO Schwartz; kudos for the air conditioning!!

    Enjoy the rest of the work week; picnic coming on the weekend. Mmm-mmm!

  • Fly away ..

    Catching up on some blogging now at the Dynasty Lounge in Jakarta international airport before heading back to TPE. Been on the road now for 8 days, KUL -> SIN -> CGK (Jakarta Airport code). Glad to have missed the Typhoon up north but the weather down here has not been normal either. Lots of rain in the early and late mornings. In Malaysia, flash floods due to heavy rains is a real danger on the road. Hills around the KL -> Ipoh -> Penang highway get washed away forcing the road crews to rebuild around the clock. Making it harder is the fact that the soil around Malayia is soft redish sand/clay like substance.

    It’s a lot of work traveling getting to know people and learning what’s going on. Met a few really nice and smart people. Impressed with the folks here in the Jakarta office. Wish I had them. Team and relationship building along with skills development are the driving forces now.

    What I haven’t figured out yet is that although it’s only 1.5 hours away from Singapore, Why is Jakarta an hour behind? I’ll have to take a look at the map again. I thought they’d be in the same window.

    Jakarta is a city of 11 million people, sprawling megapolis and quite beautiful, even though areas of it area quite poor. In between Manila/Makati City Philippines, and KL. Food delicious and the people here are just so warm, friendly and welcoming. Refreshing compared to Taiwan despite the Taiwanese reputation for being friendly people. My colleagues took me to Hotel Borobudur Jakarta which is famous for its oxtail delicacies and boy, it didn’t disappoint. I’d love to come back again soon.

    Not-so-looking forward to a busy travel schedule the next 6 weeks. I’ll be headed back to HK a couple of times, KL again, London, Singapore again. In between I’ll have to find time to move.

    Ouch.

    Happy trails folks and be well!

    PS-was in my drafts, not sure if it ever made it… from May time.