Under the 'hood

Hung and I spent all day Saturday enjoying strawberry smoothies from the street fair in the West Village, coffee at Washington Square Park, a crepe lunch at Le Gamin with Souris & Silvio, onward to Chinatown (the Bowery so I could find a kitchen table), Little Italy (where Hung stopped in a Vietnamese deli and got some fresh squeezed sugar cane juice), and Soho. We topped off the evening with sushi dinner at Blue Fin and bright night lights in Times Square. Sunday we lunched at the dried up Bethesda Fountain (because of the current NYC drought) in Central Park, and after an anti-histamine, I was knocked out the rest of the day as he left for Boston.

"Hi, I'm Hung"

That's what my cousin Hung gets to say to people when he meets them. Souris and I were sophomorically amused.

Healthy Harvest

Mom's friend's husband decided to plant some corn this year. As his wife had used up all the garden space, he found a small spot to plant his crop, unknowingly planting them over a patch of bulbs... the results are in.



This is for real.

Huh.

I love the country but...typical.

Pure Light

After a year of red, white, and blue, the Empire State building has returned to its pre-attack plain white. Curiously, the ESB has a special lighting schedule that includes colors as varied as black, yellow, purple, teal, lavender, pink, and green. I get my daily dose of colored lights as I step off the subway every day heading home and noticed that it has gone back to white since last Wednesday.

Big Apple Mac

Apple Store, SoHo is open and ready for business. I spent yesterday walking through the streets of SoHo, under the guise of enjoying the beautiful day, but secretly to play with the new titaniums at the packed, recently opened, Apple Store. I spent an hour and a half at a powerbook wherein several people rotated through the laptops beside me, including a mother and her young teenage son (wearing slacks, a jacket and button-down) who was obviously in private (perhaps boarding?) school, telling her that she should buy him the new $3199 800 Mhz G4... and she did. Where do these people come from? Oh, the UES. Seriously though, those G4s are flying off the shelves.

Following Ludwig's performance...

What does one listen to after spending sixty-seven minutes devoting one's ears to Beethoven's tremendously phenomenal 9th Symphony? I can't figure out what to listen to next.

Punny

one of my italian favorites:
"caramella, mortadella, mandarino, bacinella" literally mean "candy, cold cuts, tangerine, small basin"

Translating these Italian words strung together, as in a telegram, you get:
Cara Mella (è) morta Della, manda Rino. Baci, Nella.
Dear Mella, Della died. Bring Rino. Kisses, Nella.

It's a Deal!

I was browsing through apartment swaps and came across this one in Barcelona:
Medieval Castle-palace built in the XIV Century
9,500 SF, 45 mts from Barcelona, for 3 months
asking $1200/month

...uh, did I mention that's about what I pay for my 150sf (including the hallway square footage) single room studio in New York City? I could be living in a castle!!!

un cafe avec Picasso

On a small grassy plot at University Plaza lies a 12 meter high enlargement of a Picasso sculpture, Bust of Sylvette (1934, of sheetmetal), reproduced of Norwegian black stone and sand-blasted concrete by Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjär. It's between La Guardia Place and Greene Streets just north of Houston and South of Bleecker Street among three I.M. Pei buildings built in 1966, two of which are owned by NYU for faculty, and are among some of the ugliest downtown apartment buildings in the city. Having picked up a cup of joe at Rocco's on Bleecker, I headed that way to enjoy my coffee facing Picasso to start my Saturday morning.

With or without Bono

Live, from Times Square, the NFL Kickoff Concert & Party, "an unprecedented free football and music festival to kick off the season and celebrate the resilient spirit of New York and America" is expecting a crowd "in excess of 100,000" and note that "U2's Bono will not perform at the event." U2 is so great, they had to put that in there... guess I won't go. My sister who works at the Bertelsmann building in the midst already warned me that she had an "escape plan" and directed me to head east instead of taking my regular route home. City blocks are closed all over the place. A mess.

"Live, from New York Ity!"

Passing by heading home from work, I see the "C" in "Radio City" burnt out and I wonder... was it that way for the show?