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?

pop!

I've been dodging cables, barricades, and walkie-talkie endowed fellows on my way to and home from work as my stop is Rockefeller Center across the street from Radio City Music Hall, where MTV is hosting its VMA awards. Sixth Avenue is closed off today. Over three days of setting up, they've got little tents -- like the kind at street fairs -- where they've got catered food, complete with boxes of blow pops and ring pops. I guess when you've gotta have it, you've gotta have it.

b. 1932

Birthday shout-outs to DAD who's gonna be 70!
And to LORI who's the big 3-oh, Bryan (another 3-0'er), cousin Bi (aka Paul Nguyen), and fellow AIDS rider buddy RALPH (also Africa trekker!).
This beautiful buttercream cake, decorated with bamboo to symbolize 'evergreen' and longevity, was deeee-lish.

brother bobby?

Souris concluded after debating with friends that Bobby Trendy is Peruvian Mexican... She argued "brooks said he wasn't japanese and i told dennis with fingers waving that there was no way that bobby was vietnamese."
Color her shocked when she found out the truth through Bobby's own words in a fanzine called Mini Celebs We Love from Cable TV.

INTERVIEW WITH BOBBY TRENDY from the Anna Nicole Show

what's your nationality? i'm vietnamese. both my parents are vietnamese!
how long have you been living in america? 12 years.
how long have you been in business? i've been in the business for 2 years only!
can i get a range in prices for your furniture? sofas go for $700 and $70,000.
how much are the pillows that i can get custom with my image on it? i love those pillows you showed anna. oh those are like $500.
what do you think about design? oh i thought the 80s was frozen yogurt, the 90s was coffee shop everywhere, and in the new millenium everyone has design stores like Donna Karan. everyone was doing conservative and minamalistic shit and i wanted to do something that was visually stimulating to the eye.
do you have a design background? no design background, but honey, i can throw pumpkin seeds and tampons on a rooftop and make a fortune.
really? no design experience? but you make all that furniture? yep.
have a lot of people contacted you since you premiered on the anna nicole smith show? i've received 105 phone calls this week and people are coming in and photographing me. i'm going to be in new york next month for the christopher lowell show .
will you ever open a NY shop? no, i'm staying in LA for the time being.
so you're living the immigrants dream...the american dream! i'm white now, to quote my friend, mark, "bobby you got a cell phone, you got a colgate awesome smile and a convertible, you're WHITE!"
how is it being on the ANS show?! oh next week is exciting. there's fire with me and howard . i said not to talk back to me. i said, there's a fire in my mouth and you're the propane! he's going to learn a lesson!
can you tell me a little about your background? i was one of the first club kids to be in new york. i was on rolanda, beatrice berry, geraldo . i used to hang out at cbgb's, suger babies...monster. dexter's cool.
oh we should do a map of all the clubs you used to hang out with. a where's bobby been tour of new york! oh yeah, that would be fabulous!
what kind of clientele do you have? oh, i didn't recognize carmen electra when she came in.
you didn't? i've seen her in real life and she is what she is. oh, her face was so beautiful. i knew she was very important. but i did recognize jocelyne wildenstein.
who's that? you don't know her and you live in new york? honey you need to go to more clubs ! She's a rich socialite who looks more like an animal than a person.

Bello Yellow

What birthday is complete without a Pac-Man cake, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde cupcakes and sparkling candles? Souris' birthday production came to an end after much spending, logistics, and planning. Held in Urban Myth Media design group's SoHo loft space, there were five DJs set up to spin, 120 helium balloons transported, food cooked, party supplies bought, fab invitation designed and mailed, and a guest list loaded with New York artists, designers, and stylists... With two video game consoles running (one projected on the wall), loads of booze, contraband, and loud music... Souris' thirtieth birthday gig was a NYC bash to remember.

Are you my stalker?

Recently, someone has been running google searches on my name and browsing on all my blogs... shout out a hello, will ya? because otherwise, hey, you're creeping me out.

but we love the movies...

OK, I had a search hit for "cineplex odium theatre" which I personally find extremely amusing. Needless to say, I was the only site that came up on the search as the Cineplex Odeon perhaps understandably would not want "odium" associated with its name in any sort of marketing or write-up.

Judy Philosophy

Dinner yesterday at the famed Pearl Oyster Bar, just across the street from my house, with my buddy JK who is a fabulous florist with a gift shop that he decided to be "CLOSED INDEFINITELY." I can't remember where I first met my 6'1" Texan friend, but it was somewhere on a bike ride and it was maybe about five years ago (we both trained for the California AIDS Ride in '98 together). But I'll tell you how great it is that my friends love life as much as myself.

JK's flower shop on Capitol Hill, Through the Grapevine is wonderfully successful and built with his own two hands. Eventually, the floral shop was enhanced with a gift shop, also a grand success. One day, recently, upon evaluating some Judy Philosophy, JK decides, "ya know, I don't need to have the gift shop anymore." Why? Because he was working all of the time, between the weddings, special events, a set of clients and the shop. So what does he do? He puts a sign on the door that says "CLOSED INDEFINITELY." I have to laugh. He keeps the shelves stocked as always, lights on as if open, and a sign on the door. People come knocking, they call the number on the front, and they all want to shop there. But you know what? Life is too short to work it all away.

Fine Vinyl

Greenwich Village. Adam's house.
Housesitting while Adam's off in South Africa, the lucky dog. Today I headed to the Van de Weghe Fine Art Gallery with Souris, Kaly, and Silvio to see seven of Keith Haring's tarpaulin paintings which included the very cool Andy Mouse painting of Andy Mouse (think Warhol + Mickey) on the New Coke background. The exhibit ended to day, so to see the images, go back and check the Van de Weghe's site for "past exhibitions."

How lucky, to just walk up off the street into a two-room gallery with works of Haring on the wall, where you can stick your nose right up to the acrylic paints to see which lines he drew first, yet step back 15 feet just to set the full wall-sized painting into your direct line of sight. Only in the great city of New York (ok, a few other great cities too... but this is Haring's turf).

Added some caramel color to the hair there -- after hacking a good thirteen inches off last March, I went for another added change.

Earlier in the week, Lisa and I headed for some good Vietnamese food -- the best I've found in NYC -- at PHO BOLSA on Lafayette between Howard and Grand if you want to go. It's the most authentic Vietnamese food my sisters and I have had so far in NY and just opened about two months ago. On my way, I stopped at the new Apple Mac store in Soho's old Greene Street Post Office Building and I'm dying to get an iBook. Later, we headed to a bar in Greenwich Village (where I was carded! And I told the guy I was gonna be 30 next year), to see the premiere appearance of Van Hayride (check auraldelight.net for some background) where they did Van Halen covers for an hour. Post Van Hayride was an hour of the Brooklyn Bugaloo Blowout for great live music.

To sear or not to sear?

After martinis at the Royalton in midtown last night, Albert and I set off the smoke alarm [which is wired not battery-operated] in my apartment at midnight while attempting to sear two slabs of New York Strip Steaks for our late dinner. Funny sight it was of me standing on two telephone books underneath the alarm, the Sunday Times magazine in hand to wave the smoke away. Surely I kept the whole building up just for a steak. But a good one it was. Having had steak for dinner last night, lunch today, and dinner again today, I think I'm proteined out. Vegetarian tomorrow.

Greenwich.
I've lost my riding self. Just went for a 20-something mile ride -- headed around the corner, down Broadway, across the Brooklyn Bridge (again stopping in the middle for a drink and to tip my helmet at the space the Towers once occupied), and met Robert at Prospect Park. He'd finished six laps before I got there and truth be told, my legs felt like jelly, my lungs felt like they'd shrunk, and the humidity made me feel as though I was melting. Though the muscles are there, the strength is not -- neither is my breathing pattern, and I just can't seem to get into my riding groove. It's humbling to be passed by a woman obviously older than me, in leather pumps, on her hybrid bike sans helmet, and carrying a knapsack while I'm decked out in my Sidi shoes and 747 Shimano SPD pedals, 21 gears and the works. Okay, so I'm not used to riding with this extra 12 lbs. or so (I last weighed in at around 99 or 100, which is a huge jump from my 87 a year ago), and it's been 2 years since I've done a century (that's a 100-mile ride for you non-riding folks) and it's super humid in the city today. So much so, that the thought seeing even LANCE ARMSTRONG racing downtown in a 100K criterium wasn't enough to get me off the air conditioned train (I did not ride back from Brooklyn). He must be bored to death riding in this crappy weather doing 50 laps of a miserable 2K stretch along the Financial District's Water Street after the rolling vineyards in France. He's a pro racer, though, and as hard as his job may be, it sure beats sitting in a cubicle.

Cingular wireless service has launched a $20 million ad campaign as it enters New York's already saturated market. Subway ads, billboards, bus kiosks, and even entire buses display the trendy orange anthropomorphic logo.

In the West 4th street station, among several, was one that showed the little Cingular logo in the corner and a phone. The text read:

Studio apartment: $2000
Dinner for two: $425
Pre-school: $13,000
Cingular wireless service: $29.99

Somebody went at it with a big black magic marker and printed the text underneath the last line:
FREEDOM FROM CORPORATE RULE: PRICELESS

Unfortunately, it didn't last more than a week by the time I went by with a digital camera, and they replaced the ad altogether with a different concept. Perhaps they realized the power of Mastercard's campaign?
Funny.

Kim comes to town this weekend and Saturday we head to the Ethyl Barrymore Theatre to see Tale of the Allergist's Wife. Otherwise, things seem pretty calm in New York and the heat has eased off a bit.

Last weekend, my cousin Chuong from Vietnam -- and my Vietnam tour guide extraordinaire was in town to visit Souris and Kaly, whom he hadn't seen in 21 years. In grand Vietnamese style, Chuong's family is full of doctors, lawyers, and seven of eight kids who went to Berkeley, most with post grad degrees. Surely their parents are proud.

funniest search hit in the last few days?
taco truck new york upper west side

The other day Kaly and I ate at a favorite and newfound vietnamese restaurant where we met the nice family from Hue who owned the place and got stuck there in the raging thunderstorm. We saw three people get up to leave and upon arriving at the exit, they scanned the severity, and the one TOOK OFF HER SHOES AND SOCKS as Kaly and I watched in HORROR as we anticipated her next unseemly move - to run BAREFOOT on the FILTHY rotten sidewalks of CHINATOWN. Streets filled with rubbish, rotten food, animal and human excrement -- disgusting. She pulled up in a car and picked up her friends who handed her shoes and socks back which they protected from the rain. Uhhhh... my feet are more valuable to me than ANY pair of shoes.

Today there was a major blackout in the grid below 14th Street and west of Broadway - wherein I live smack center. Turns out there was a tremendous explosion that cut out my electricity. I assumed it was the construction guys working upstairs on the apartment above me (they're renovating it while it's vacant) and I was waiting over an hour for Kaly to come down for lunch. Little did I know she was sadly stuck in the subway between 72nd and 59th. To kill time, I called Julia who lives at Union Square, and Dave, her husband, tells me they're out of power too - "Hey" I exclaimed, what a funny coincidence. But Dave tells me about the explosion at the ConEd plant on the east side. At least I felt better about Kaly being late, but as an hour and a half went by, I was pretty worried. Eventually I heard a knock on my door and realized Kaly was lucky enough to get in while someone else walked out, because the buzzers weren't working either... Ugh. It was an utter mess today below 14th with traffic and pedestrians all about, with no sense of whose turn it is to cross the intersections.

Chuong is in town and it's almost 4 a.m. (we're already reading the Sunday Times which we picked up at 3 a.m.) so off to sleep now and I'll finish later when I'm more coherent.

photograph © Calder Estate
Last Wednesday, Kaly, Souris, Silvio and I attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Summer Exhibitions opening reception. Good food, drink, and art. S & S's friend, David Lee extended the invitations as David's sister, Yvette, was the co-curator for the Joan Mitchell show - one of the five summer exhibitions. Meeting Yvette (whose name is painted on the wall!) was great - she told us how difficult it was to select just 59 paintings out of hundreds to showcase Mitchell's lifelong work. The other exhibit we browsed was Claes Oldenberg's drawings - of which the Whitney has the largest collection in the world. Of course, we quickly browsed Calder's mobiles, a favorite for Souris, David and myself.

Thursday we did the family thing for Kaly's birthday, and Friday I joined Kaly and her friends for a birthday dinner, was out late, got up 2 hours later, and headed to D.C. with Ed for Mike & Sue's Cherokee ceremony and purple and white outdoor wedding in Harper's Ferry.

Busy weekend; didn't even see mom and dad, and I'm back in the swing of work and the NY scene. I've thought of another job for myself - to work as a classroom assistant in a Jewish pre-school. I loved being in school with Mica in Atlanta, running around the playground, learning Hebrew, singing out of tune, and eating afternoon snack (ice cream on Fridays!). I think it suits me much better than working in a law firm...

The race has begun.
The 2002 Tour de France is already underway, with the prolog and Stage 1 complete. You can read minute by minute updates of the entire race under the newsflashes on their site and find out other cool info. Of course, with out satellite (heck, I am without TV!), internet coverage is next best. In fact, internet coverage is more interesting than my experience with OLN's coverage (as compared, also, to the former coverage by ESPN2) since they do such a bad job of editing the race for max info and excitement. As such, I'm still not motivated to ever buy a TV.

Just spent an incredibly lazy weekend with Les, who came in on Wednesday night, eating, drinking, and being merry in the Village. Independence Day went without a bang, as it was insufferably hot and we chose to nap over trekking to the East River. Dined in NY staples like Corner Bistro, John's Pizzeria, and Cornelia Street Cafe. I still vote for Lombardi's as NYC's best pizza place (in Soho on Spring Street).

Like I said, lazy weekend. Oh, except for the part where I biked six or so miles across Brooklyn Bridge (and paused to tip my helmeted head in the direction of the WTC) to meet Robert in Prospect Park for 21 more after a 23-month hiatus in the saddle. Though the legs aren't sore, I'm not the same cyclist I was at 23...

DON'T GO HERE

There's a REALLY bad Vietnamese restaurant at University & 13th Street called Annam. All the waiters are Chinese and only the busboy can speak Vietnamese. I ordered Goi Tom which is supposed to be made with red onions, pickled daikon & carrots (Vietnamese style), sliced boiled shrimp, lotus shoots, peanuts, cilantro and mint. Instead, I got boiled shrimp tossed over romaine lettuce. Uhhhh... they call romaine Vietnamese? BAD. So Kaly and I asked the busboy what dishes were ACTUALLY Vietnamese dishes there and he replied that there were only about four (he actually tried to tell me that the salad I received was, well, "lai" which means mixed culture to which I adamantly replied, "Sir, it is 100% NOT Vietnamese"). So if you go there, the only thing you can order really is the Banh Cuon with Thit Bo Nuong which is the Grilled Beef skewers with rice cakes (or rice noodles). Basically, just DON'T GO THERE. The absurdity is that underneath the word Annam on the door are the painted words, "A Vietnamese Restaurant."

Search Hits

I'm noticing that in the last week, many of my hits are coming from Google searches. The things people search!

The funniest search I've had:
MARIO CUOMO FIGURINES

and a few more...
for my Asian Pacific Adventures:
ten thousand buddhas, temple, niagara falls, restaurant
chinese lunar calendar 2002 good day to get married "good day to get married"
vietnamese wedding + reception
great gurus that impacted my life
turkeys airways bangkok (on Dutch Google)
names and themes of diners cafes
candy strangers frostbite
"dave eckert", cia
pretty + spider + driving + product -man

for this blog
japanese "locks of love"
"pork taco" dc
bus trips to bush gardens to williamsburg

The Film Forum, just four blocks from home (and one of those things that makes New York the greatest city on earth), is showing Mel Brooks' The Producers for an extra week, with a spectacular summer filled with Akira Kurosawa's films starring Toshiro Mifune complete with new translation of Seven Samurai which means new subtitles. Next week I'll hopefully manage to see Luchino Visconti's Rocco and his Brothers (director of The Leopard) starring Alain Delon!

Suddenly I find myself triple booked and the options are:
Get my bike from Long Island from Ed who gave the Hoo Koo E Koo a thorough washing, lubing, brand new tires and Mr. Tuffys (which Stella's shop in Brooklyn removed and never replaced afterwhich I received my first (and only) ever flat)...
Dinner with friends who are going to Vietnam and need the low-down on do's and don't's (a comprehensive list will eventually appear on the sidebar here --->). I'm beginning to think I need to write a must-read travel book for Vietnam visitors in correspondence form rather than the guidebook listing type... does anyone know a publisher who wants to publish it?
And, of course, ITALIAN lessons, as over two years has gone by since my last course and I'm desperate to pick it up again.

That leaves me with no choice, really, because Italian is the answer, and so tonight, I tried to plan on doing some last minute cramming of reviewing my notes of two years ago, but alas... I'm blogging. And so tomorrow, we hope that Robert, il mio professore, will not be picking on me too much.

On the subject of blogging, East West Adventures is getting hits from a new site called New York City Bloggers which literally maps New York Bloggers on the subway map - super cool.

Imagine

They took my sign down in Times Square.
Since I've been back (and probably since September), there has been a plain white billboard in the heart of Times Square with plain black Helvetica type that read:

Imagine all of the people living in peace.

Underneath that board ran different billboard advertisements, most recently an ad for HBO's Six Feet Under. HBO's billboard was replaced, in an odd contradiction of communicating a message, with Showtime's network that advertised:

More fights than any other channel on network television.
complete with red image of a sweating boxer with his right arm outstretched, finishing off a punch.

Two weeks after the fight sign went up, my peace sign went down.

Just in from New Paltz, New York
Awoke at 6 a.m. this Sunday morning to go rock climbing with Katy, Eric and Damian in New Paltz at the Mohonk Preserve, home of the Shawangunk Mountains (a.k.a. the Gunks) where we gently ascended upon the rocks today. Eric and Katy taught us how to get sticky with the rock, and sore as I am at the moment, I'm addicted. We scaled two climbs, the first named Jackie, which was on a Gunk scale a 5.5 climb (according to our fearless leaders, Gunk ratings are generally more difficult than West Coast ratings) and our second climb, whose name I forget, which was a 5.9+ where I didn't get to the top but tried my best.
i'm in crash mode though, so must write more later.

THE ALL CLAD IS HERE.

So I have just discovered that my paper engineer IDOL has his own web site. About two years ago, I first met Robert Sabuda on a training ride while we were both training for the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride. I ran into him again in Alaska where I said something along the lines of "oh, hey, are you Richard?" And he kindly replied that he was Robert. Through mutual friends Enrique and Vinnie (whom I met on the airplane between Houston and Anchorage), we all spent our last Ride day having a grand seafood dinner together.

Back in NYC a few months later, Enrique tells me how Robert is a children's book artist (WHOA, I exclaimed, as I am an avid collector of children's books), and then he goes on to say that Robert is a POP-UP ARTIST at which my excitement increased by leaps and bounds as I am an ardent admirer of pop-up and origami. Eventually, Kaly and I went to Robert's book signing at Books of Wonder, one of New York City's most fabulous children's book stores where we were so enthused, we purchased at least a half dozen of his books (including a copy of Cookie Counts: A Tasty Pop-up signed to me). If you only buy ONE book this year, you MUST buy Cookie Counts. It is the most exquisitely beautiful and fascinating book I own. In the winter of 2000, I brought it to the Epstein school's 3-year old class and I read the book to our twelve 3-year olds. They were popping out of their seats and made me read it three times, and then about 3 or 4 parents went out and bought it. My aunt Lori and my sister Kiki went out to buy about a dozen more of Robert's books for holiday gifts, and then their friends in turn, as enchanted by Robert's amazing pop-up talents as we were, all went out to buy copies.

In 2001, Robert curated (or co-curated, I can't remember) the Brooklyn Pops UP! exhibit at the Brooklyn public library, of which I caught the remnants of the show. He worked with renowned Maurice Sendak and many other children's book artists for a project (and pop-up book!) for the show.

One of these days I would love to have a Robert Sabuda book party...I'm sure you guys would buy up a good 500 books, at least. You have GOT to go to the book store and see one LIVE for yourself. Robert's books have a youthful effect on one's mind, the same way as ice cream, only without any of the calories!

All Clad pieces are starting to come in. It's true... the way to a Hong's heart is through her stomach!
Still haven't managed to get very far with unpacking as I haven't built my shelves though the more stuff I actually get in here, the better the space begins to feel.

Kiki came into town for Sunday and we gave downtown a good walk through and dined at a couple of good restos in the area with Kaly. Then we hit several hardware stores (I'm eyeing shelving, molding, lumber, s-hooks, power tools, and all that good hardware stuff). Can't be too exciting for some, but I love hardware stores almost as much as stationery stores (I secretly covet power tools and a garage-woodshop).

On Sunday, we all went to the RES party which was at the Eyebeam | atelier space and gallery in Chelsea, "a not-for-profit new media arts organization that initiates, supports, and preserves artworks created with computers and digital tools."