besides, my laptop case is pretty comfy for napping.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Turandot
besides, my laptop case is pretty comfy for napping.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Pictures of kitties
sister's cat. She has an upside down heart on her face! It kinda makes
her look like she has no nose. So cute!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Now that's just wrong.
screwed up in my beautiful little mac!
What a world, what a world! Who would have thought that a good little
girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Why NYC is my favorite city.
Reasons NYC is basically my favorite city. Tokyo now has a place in my heart too, but it's essentially the other side of the planet from my family and I barely speak the language so I have to admit it's not the most practical choice. Since I was supposed to post this blog when I was in NYC I thought I'd write about the reasons New York is my favorite city.
I love that the Time-Space continuum appears to be broken in NYC. Manhattan is 22.7 square miles (don't doubt me, I totally looked it up) but it takes a huge amount of effort and time to get anywhere. I used to stay with a friend in Columbia (the upper west side of the island) and it took him an hour to get to work in Midtown. It takes you pretty much an hour to get pretty much anywhere. It's only 22 square miles!! The most amazing thing about this is that it will also take basically an hour to get anywhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Cross Brooklyn? An hour. Trans-Brooklyn? An hour. From Brooklyn to Manhattan or vice versa? An hour. Upper East side Manhattan to Canal street? It'll still take an hour. Want to walk from a subway stop to somewhere in the Village? It's going to take an hour.
It's only when you start to travel from the outer bits of the boroughs to Manhattan or from Manhattan to Jersey that it starts to take longer. At that point whatever magical time rule it is that keeps NYC in its own little space-time bubble breaks and travel kicks you in the nuts. Want to go from Dyker Heights Brooklyn to Preakness NJ? Four hours. Need to take public transit from Allen and Canal to JFK airport? Three hours.
Due to this travel weirdness and some kind of bizarre geography class war people are reluctant to travel outside of their own areas. People from Williamsburg Brooklyn act like Brooklyn is the end-all be-all of the world. People from the Upper East Side seem to think they're royalty. People from any part of the island seem to regard Chinatown like some kind of mystical, magical land that one must take day trips to visit. One day the boroughs are going to descend into Gangs of New York again. I'm telling you.
Speaking of geography class wars, I love the Marsha and Jan Brady relationship that New Jersey and New York have. From my experience, all NYC commuters seem simultaneously apologetic and defensive about their outsider status. Nowhere is that mixed sense of longing, jealousy and hatred towards "the city" felt as strongly as in New Jersey. I will probably never figure it out, but people in New Jersey behave exactly as a younger, snubbed sibling to the older, popular sibling. I have only ever met one person from New Jersey who doesn't seem to care about New York one way or another.
I love the diversity of people in the city and all that it gives rise to. The fact that all these people crammed together, interacting with each other brings into the world stereotypes, the destruction of those stereotypes, hybrid culture, culture pockets and tolerance is something amazing to me. All of my Brooklyn friends' landlords are jewish and notoriously stubborn, every bodega I've gone into has had a middle eastern person behind the counter and yet drivers of the taxis I've taken have been incredibly racially diverse. I'd be willing to believe that "fusion restaurants" were invented in Manhattan. I've encountered entire neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan where the houses and people could have been clones. Seems that "opposites attract" is crap. Despite this "stick to ourselves" feeling that many neighborhoods have, people themselves try new things and do new things all the time. There is a group of elderly people doing Tai' Chi in the park that I pass every time I come to the city. They look like a stock photo for diversity. It's amazing.
Trying and doing new things. That's another reason I love NYC. Everyone you know knows somebody who doesn't know you. Hey, my graduating class in high school had 80 people, knowing someone who doesn't know you is a big deal! Beyond the fact that you can -in NYC- meet someone who is truly a stranger to you, many of these strangers are interested in doing new things. There are always new restaurants and new bars, new parks and new gallery openings. If you're adventurous you could do something you've never done on every day of the week. Talk about broadening horizons!
Not only are there new things to do, but there are old things to do. Museums. Tons of them. They are awesome. Though I don't think anything will ever top the elephant in the grand hall of the Smithsonian in DC the Met is, well, The Met.
Vaguely related to the whole "people who don't know you" thing is the fact that you are almost constantly surrounded by people. For me as a people watcher, this is amazing. It's 3 am on a Wednesday and I'm taking a cab to the train station. 3 am is the time that I largely regard as no-mans-land time. It's too late for late people and too early for early people. Are bakers up at 3 am? Maybe. People coming home from night clubs? People closing the night clubs? Sure, I guess. So what's up with that guy walking his dog and this girl over here with groceries and cut flowers?!
It's 3 AM! There are fewer people around now than there will be at noon, but there's still a full compliment of people doing normal day stuff. What grocery store is open at 3 am?! I don't know who these people are or why they're up and doing mundane things at no-mans-land time, but I think they are fabulous. This is the place where vampire-run all night dry cleaners might actually work out.
Cut flowers, another thing I love about NYC. What is up with all the cut flowers in all the grocery stores? I don't get it, but it's amazing.
Resuming prior tack. People. There are a select few cities where you can be surrounded by people and totally invisible at the same time. New York is one of them. I truly believe that a grievous crime could be committed at any time on the streets of New York and maybe half of the people who saw it would actually see it. This is fascinating to me in the same way that sharks and the third rail are fascinating.
I'm totally loving all my segues here. The subway. That's awesome too. I read somewhere that the overwhelming majority of adults in the USA use cars to get around. This is totally flip flopped in NYC, where only 18% of adults even own a car (thank you US Census 2000). I'm a big green energy person and I truly believe in my heart that reliable public transportation is where it's at. This works for NYC. You can feel free to ask me how I feel about that later, when I'm stranded out in Dyker Heights and the D train isn't running back into the city on the weekend.
Here in Richmond, the busses stop after 10 pm and many of them don't run on the weekends at all. The most one can say about NYC transit is that it slows down sometimes...or goes on strike. That too.
Anyway. I don't care that the subways are dirty. I even kind of dig that they've got their own smell. There is nothing that smells like that other than subway. Everyone oohs and ahhs about how clean and pretty the DC Metro is. I don't dig them. On the DC Metro I feel like I"m 5 again and sitting on my great aunt's hermetically sealed, plastic wrapped couch. Don't talk, don't use your phone, don't chew gum, fuck, don't even bring FOOD onto the metro. It's bullshit. Sure, it's pretty, it's even been carpeted, but when you're on the 70s colored, fluorescent lit, clean, sterile and bright train hurtling towards Dulles at 5 am and everyone on the train is polished, silent as the grave, staring ahead, not making eye contact with anyone or reading or anything you will think it's creepy too. Give me a normal, organic subway with people doing normal, organic things any day.
All of this and I haven't even gotten to the shopping yet and I've never even visited Central Park. New York isn't THE city of dreams, but it is MY city of dreams.
I love that the Time-Space continuum appears to be broken in NYC. Manhattan is 22.7 square miles (don't doubt me, I totally looked it up) but it takes a huge amount of effort and time to get anywhere. I used to stay with a friend in Columbia (the upper west side of the island) and it took him an hour to get to work in Midtown. It takes you pretty much an hour to get pretty much anywhere. It's only 22 square miles!! The most amazing thing about this is that it will also take basically an hour to get anywhere between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Cross Brooklyn? An hour. Trans-Brooklyn? An hour. From Brooklyn to Manhattan or vice versa? An hour. Upper East side Manhattan to Canal street? It'll still take an hour. Want to walk from a subway stop to somewhere in the Village? It's going to take an hour.
It's only when you start to travel from the outer bits of the boroughs to Manhattan or from Manhattan to Jersey that it starts to take longer. At that point whatever magical time rule it is that keeps NYC in its own little space-time bubble breaks and travel kicks you in the nuts. Want to go from Dyker Heights Brooklyn to Preakness NJ? Four hours. Need to take public transit from Allen and Canal to JFK airport? Three hours.
Due to this travel weirdness and some kind of bizarre geography class war people are reluctant to travel outside of their own areas. People from Williamsburg Brooklyn act like Brooklyn is the end-all be-all of the world. People from the Upper East Side seem to think they're royalty. People from any part of the island seem to regard Chinatown like some kind of mystical, magical land that one must take day trips to visit. One day the boroughs are going to descend into Gangs of New York again. I'm telling you.
Speaking of geography class wars, I love the Marsha and Jan Brady relationship that New Jersey and New York have. From my experience, all NYC commuters seem simultaneously apologetic and defensive about their outsider status. Nowhere is that mixed sense of longing, jealousy and hatred towards "the city" felt as strongly as in New Jersey. I will probably never figure it out, but people in New Jersey behave exactly as a younger, snubbed sibling to the older, popular sibling. I have only ever met one person from New Jersey who doesn't seem to care about New York one way or another.
I love the diversity of people in the city and all that it gives rise to. The fact that all these people crammed together, interacting with each other brings into the world stereotypes, the destruction of those stereotypes, hybrid culture, culture pockets and tolerance is something amazing to me. All of my Brooklyn friends' landlords are jewish and notoriously stubborn, every bodega I've gone into has had a middle eastern person behind the counter and yet drivers of the taxis I've taken have been incredibly racially diverse. I'd be willing to believe that "fusion restaurants" were invented in Manhattan. I've encountered entire neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan where the houses and people could have been clones. Seems that "opposites attract" is crap. Despite this "stick to ourselves" feeling that many neighborhoods have, people themselves try new things and do new things all the time. There is a group of elderly people doing Tai' Chi in the park that I pass every time I come to the city. They look like a stock photo for diversity. It's amazing.
Trying and doing new things. That's another reason I love NYC. Everyone you know knows somebody who doesn't know you. Hey, my graduating class in high school had 80 people, knowing someone who doesn't know you is a big deal! Beyond the fact that you can -in NYC- meet someone who is truly a stranger to you, many of these strangers are interested in doing new things. There are always new restaurants and new bars, new parks and new gallery openings. If you're adventurous you could do something you've never done on every day of the week. Talk about broadening horizons!
Not only are there new things to do, but there are old things to do. Museums. Tons of them. They are awesome. Though I don't think anything will ever top the elephant in the grand hall of the Smithsonian in DC the Met is, well, The Met.
Vaguely related to the whole "people who don't know you" thing is the fact that you are almost constantly surrounded by people. For me as a people watcher, this is amazing. It's 3 am on a Wednesday and I'm taking a cab to the train station. 3 am is the time that I largely regard as no-mans-land time. It's too late for late people and too early for early people. Are bakers up at 3 am? Maybe. People coming home from night clubs? People closing the night clubs? Sure, I guess. So what's up with that guy walking his dog and this girl over here with groceries and cut flowers?!
It's 3 AM! There are fewer people around now than there will be at noon, but there's still a full compliment of people doing normal day stuff. What grocery store is open at 3 am?! I don't know who these people are or why they're up and doing mundane things at no-mans-land time, but I think they are fabulous. This is the place where vampire-run all night dry cleaners might actually work out.
Cut flowers, another thing I love about NYC. What is up with all the cut flowers in all the grocery stores? I don't get it, but it's amazing.
Resuming prior tack. People. There are a select few cities where you can be surrounded by people and totally invisible at the same time. New York is one of them. I truly believe that a grievous crime could be committed at any time on the streets of New York and maybe half of the people who saw it would actually see it. This is fascinating to me in the same way that sharks and the third rail are fascinating.
I'm totally loving all my segues here. The subway. That's awesome too. I read somewhere that the overwhelming majority of adults in the USA use cars to get around. This is totally flip flopped in NYC, where only 18% of adults even own a car (thank you US Census 2000). I'm a big green energy person and I truly believe in my heart that reliable public transportation is where it's at. This works for NYC. You can feel free to ask me how I feel about that later, when I'm stranded out in Dyker Heights and the D train isn't running back into the city on the weekend.
Here in Richmond, the busses stop after 10 pm and many of them don't run on the weekends at all. The most one can say about NYC transit is that it slows down sometimes...or goes on strike. That too.
Anyway. I don't care that the subways are dirty. I even kind of dig that they've got their own smell. There is nothing that smells like that other than subway. Everyone oohs and ahhs about how clean and pretty the DC Metro is. I don't dig them. On the DC Metro I feel like I"m 5 again and sitting on my great aunt's hermetically sealed, plastic wrapped couch. Don't talk, don't use your phone, don't chew gum, fuck, don't even bring FOOD onto the metro. It's bullshit. Sure, it's pretty, it's even been carpeted, but when you're on the 70s colored, fluorescent lit, clean, sterile and bright train hurtling towards Dulles at 5 am and everyone on the train is polished, silent as the grave, staring ahead, not making eye contact with anyone or reading or anything you will think it's creepy too. Give me a normal, organic subway with people doing normal, organic things any day.
All of this and I haven't even gotten to the shopping yet and I've never even visited Central Park. New York isn't THE city of dreams, but it is MY city of dreams.
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