left brain

Meeting Avril

Joe and I with Avril, haha....

Happy New Years !!

Full blown posting will resume sometime after January 7th after I fully recover from my New Years plans, which to you, are a surprise until after I return.  But the full-blown serious digital camera is coming with me so be excited. 

Have a blast and don’t get drunk and then pretend you can drive, please.  Find a buddy to drive you home and pound you once he gets you safely there.

I Love NY?

There are certain reasons why New Yorkers believe that they are the center of the world.  Or at the very least, the absolute center of the United States.   New York Magazine felt the need to elaborate with "Reasons to Love New York Now."    Some of them are funny, some of them are bizarre, and some of them like the ones below, I just completely agree with:

Yes, L.A., your stunning, supernaturally toned, and eerily tanned actresses may demonstrate their range by playing a midriff-baring dance instructor, a midriff-baring scuba diver, a midriff-baring stripper, and a leotard-wearing superhero (Pomona’s Jessica Alba). But our stunning, quite-often-pale-but-still-drop-dead-gorgeous actresses can actually act. In fact, it’s becoming obvious that the world’s best beautiful actresses either speak with funny accents—Winslet, Kidman, Blanchett, Mirren, et al.—or they’re New Yorkers: Streep, Moore, Portman, Connelly, Johansson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Thurman, for starters (Gwyneth, a New Yorker in London, and Rachel Weisz, a Brit in our Soho, diplomatically bridge the gap). Here, Streep is our undisputed queen (long may she reign!), but Maggie Gyllenhaal has shown that she may one day inherit the mantle. A politically outspoken, Columbia-educated fashion plate who just happens to be engaged to one of the city’s classiest young actors (Peter Sarsgaard), Gyllenhaal has always been one of those Über–New Yorkers you’re proud to call “neighbor.” This year, she proved she could be a starEvery day, impossibly gorgeous girls (and BOYS) are plucked from midwestern malls and Russian cafés, Brazilian beaches and small Eastern European towns, and hustled to Manhattan. The burning hope is that theirs will become The Face, and its bearer the new belle of New York—and from here, the world.

                               

In the rest of America, people crave human contact. Buying a quart of milk may be one’s only conversation for the day, and clerk and customer stretch out the transaction with pleasant chat. In Manhattan, by contrast, the relentless crush of humanity makes solitude into something not to be rejected but to be embraced, even defended. When out-of-towners see us pass each other by with barely a grunt, they mistake our lack of small talk for coldness. Really, we’re exchanging a small, invisible gift: a moment’s silence.  Strangely, solitude can be nicest in public. Walking down a sparsely populated New York street is downright therapeutic, especially upon release from a bleeping office or a packed subway car. The solo walk clears your head, lets you pace off the day’s frustrations, turns you back into the person you wish to be. (Sometimes an iPod helps, but private silence, over a nice bass line of traffic, can be the best part.)

The Situation Room ?

Overhaul Moves White House Data Center Into Modern Era - New York Times.

In reality, it was something of a low-tech dungeon.

Until it closed for its biggest overhaul since John F. Kennedy settled into its wood-paneled conference room, most of the room’s monitors used — get this — picture tubes. Communications were often by fax. The computers and telephones looked like the best technology available, in 1985. There was a small kitchen, but it had no sink.

On Dec. 27 the new Situation Room is to open formally, the result of planning that reaches back to before the Sept. 11 attacks but took on added urgency afterward. The White House offered a preview to two reporters on Monday, days before its new data center is pumped full of classified information and its doors are sealed to outsiders.

Even in its new incarnation, it is not quite up to the standards of “24.” But it is getting closer. For starters, Mr. Bush’s new main conference room, just underneath the main floor of the West Wing, has six flat-screen televisions for secure video conferences, and the technology linking them to generals and prime ministers around the globe makes it less likely that the encrypted voices and images will go black. (That happened regularly in connections to Baghdad, an event one former administration official said had been known to “prompt a presidential outburst.”)

The screens also have what Joe Hagin, the deputy White House chief of staff, described in a tour as “John Madden telestrators,” the ability to perform on-screen drawings.

(White House technologists settled on NEC plasma flat-screens for the president’s main conference room and LCD screens, made by LG, in the remainder of the chamber.)

The watch officers, who were previously seated so they stared at walls rather than each other, are now arrayed on two tiers of curved computer terminals that can be fed both classified and unclassified data from around the country and the world. That ends a problem that most multi-national companies solved years ago, an inability to merge different kinds of data without effectively having to cut and paste.  “We were all underwhelmed the first time we walked into the Situation Room,” he said in an interview at the White House on Monday, an
assessment shared by others.

The "Straight" Male

My friend H and I have been talking about the gay 10% and various other things dealing with homosexuality and what-not recently.   We really started dreaming and started imagining an entirely gay city/country, like that of Israel and where straight people need visas to get in and are only allowed weekly visits.  The most hysterical and I think the most true, given that yesterday at the gym it was fully in action, is the narcissistic action of staring at yourself in the mirror while working out.  "Straight" boys/men will stare at themselves while they beef up their bodies at the gym constantly.  Like as I noticed yesterday when it was so blantantly obvious, they will stare, pose, turn, model, pose pump their muscles.  It is a total love affair with the male body.  And one of the gayest things that the majority of the straight male culture does.  So that 10% everyone talks about is a lot higher when fully investigated.  Oh, and I won't even talk about the steam room/sauna where the "straight" horned up boys after their sweaty workout seem to need a lot more action than their girlfriend or wife can provide.   Haha, ew.

On Saturday, They Rested

On Saturday, They Rested - New York Times.

Sunday through Friday, the Spotted Pig, an intimate gastropub in Greenwich Village, functions as a clubhouse for a certain breed of discreet celebrities like Maggie Gyllenhaal because it feels less like a Hollywood “it” restaurant than an intimate neighborhood cubbyhole, safe from gawkers.  Then there’s Saturday, when even one of the owners can’t deal with the place.  “The Spotted Pig is not cool on Saturdays,” said Ken Friedman, an owner of the restaurant. On Saturdays, Mr. Friedman said, tourists and suburbanites routinely trek in and wait in line hoping for a glimpse of a celebrity huddled over sheep’s ricotta gnudi. The throngs became so bad that management broke down and hired security just for Saturdays. Neighborhood people and celebrities alike have mostly ceded the night, Mr. Friedman said. At best, he said, they will “last for a couple drinks and then storm off in a huff.”

Saturday has long been considered the uncoolest night for going out by dedicated clubgoers and those who fancy themselves hipper than thou. And changes in Manhattan night life over the past decade have only made city-dwellers more disenchanted with that night. Quality-of-life crusades by consecutive mayors have polished away New York’s gritty edge. Palaces of mass excess that have sprung up in West Chelsea and the meatpacking district lure revelers from far and wide. So insiders have increasingly run for cover.  For status-conscious New Yorkers, Saturday has become synonymous with hordes of pleasure dilettantes wearing gelled hairstyles and quaffing Red Bull, creating hourlong lines at clubs that city dwellers may line up for on Thursday or even Monday, but will not get within five stretch-Hummer lengths from on Saturday. Instead, Netflix and Vietnamese takeout sounds good, or maybe that new Bond movie. It’s a night that people accustomed to quoting Andy Warhol or Diddy may summarize by invoking another New York luminary: Yogi Berra, who said, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”

So what do agoraphobic Manhattanites do on everyone else’s Big Night?

“It’s the night you’re low-key and just enjoy your friends, catch up,” Ms. Peterson said. “If I was to go out on a Saturday night, it would be to a friend’s house. I would never go to a club — not because I want to be away from the riffraff, or because I think I’m better. But during the week, you’re busy, so during the weekend, you need the chance to unplug.”

“People in the suburbs, it’s their chance to come in, have fun and sleep the next day,” she added. “We’re on the pulse, so we can do it anytime.”

Candace Bushnell, the party-hopping author of novels about the high life, said that for her and her husband, the dancer Charles Askegard, Saturday night offers a chance to do what those who don’t juggle invitations the rest of the week do at night. That is, watch television.  “I wish the networks would get with it and understand that we need some really good programming for Saturday nights because there’s nothing on,” she said. “And that’s probably the one night when New Yorkers are home watching TV.”

As a party night, Saturday historically has everything going for it. Named for Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture (his wife, Ops, was the goddess of plenty), Saturday carried connotations of a bountiful harvest after a week of toil. For Christian Europeans of the Middle Ages, Saturday night was the evening they could indulge in wine and feasting before returning to piety and abnegation on the Sabbath.

Five centuries later in New York, when every night can be a party night, the one most favored by all the latter-day toilers in the fields is a must to avoid. For high society, it has always been a night off from the black-tie circuit — an evening spent at a second home in Water Mill, N.Y., or Palm Beach, Fla. 

Of course, the Saturday-shy New Yorkers who do go out on the town that night often do so with reservation — and reservations.

Last Saturday, four Manhattanites in their early 30s were huddling over a low table downstairs at Buddakan, the cavernous pan-Asian restaurant in the meatpacking district. “During the weekends, you get a lot of clutter, if you will,” said Brian Kirimdar, 30, an investment banker. He and his wife, Ashley, tend to hide out in restaurants on Saturdays, avoiding all but a few of the Chelsea clubs. “You don’t find too many bridge-and-tunnel people at Cielo or Marquee,” he said. “You really have to pick and choose.”

Indeed, it is no accident that clubs like Marquee, its upstairs V.I.P. room packed with models even on Saturdays, and Stereo, known for its Nikes-only sneaker policy, are more outsider proof.

“No cologne, earrings or hair gel,” said Michael Satsky, an owner of Stereo, standing outside the velvet rope of his club on West 29th Street around 1 a.m., explaining his weekend door policy.

Mission? IMPOSSIBLE.

Mission: Impossible III, by the NYTimes  (sorry Eric, but this shit is funny).

IT would be a stretch to say that Tom Cruise needs a hit. What this guy needs is an intervention, someone who can help the star once known as Tom Terrific return to the glory days, when the only things most of us really knew about him came from the boilerplate continually recycled in glossy magazines, sealing him in a bubble of blandness and mystery. In those days, we didn't know that inside the world's biggest movie draw lurked a reckless couch-jumper and heartless amateur pharmacologist. All we saw was a billion-dollar smile and a performer who risked life and limb, everything but his own true self, for our movie-going pleasure.  Until the ascendancy of George Clooney, the multi-hyphenated sex bomb (he walks, he talks, he smiles and he thinks!), few stars seemed to work harder than Mr. Cruise. The embodiment of the 1990's extreme ethos, he could be counted on to hang tougher than anyone else, whether doing his own stunts, spending a couple of years in production with Stanley Kubrick, or, as he did on more than one occasion, rescuing a civilian. Recently, though, all that extremeness has seemed, well, too extreme. And you have to wonder if the real mission in his newest film isn't the search for the damsel in distress or the hunt for the supervillain, but the resurrection of a screen attraction who has, of late, seemed a bit of a freak.

Aptly named or not, "Mission: Impossible III" may emerge as Mr. Cruise's latest box-office triumph, but it won't do him any favors when it comes to his public persona, since it appears to have been explicitly tailored to reflect his personal life, or at least its outward face. Much like the man playing him, Ethan works only if you don't know anything about what makes him tick. Once upon a Hollywood time, the studios carefully protected their stars from the press and the public. Now the impossible mission, it seems, is protecting them from themselves.

Marathon Monday

Today is one of the few days Boston truly SHINES.  The city has been alive and kicking all weekend packed with runners and the family who love them, mega amounts of tourists, drunken college boys going nutso since Friday, and Italian places jam packed because of all of the people eating mega amounts of carbs.  Patriots Day or as most massholes call it is Marathon Monday, when the Boston Marathon happens, next largest after NYC. 

Unfortunately, I don't have the day off which means (like the last two years in a row) I have to convince a cop to let me jump the barrier erected on Boylston street to get to the other side of Boylston street to get to work (on Newbury) and viceversa at 6pm when I get off work and have to head back to the South End.  It is usually a good time, lol.  I guess I don't drive and I should be thankful for that because you have to be a total idiot to even think about driving into the city today.  Last week I laughed out loud when See Kyle Draw said that driving in Boston is like flying through the trench on the DeathStar as Luke Skywalker.  It pretty much sums it up, lol.  Boston is known to be a driving catastrophe but it has cleared up some thanks to the Big Dig but left behind are the roads without lanes, traffic signs, and the good ole Bostonians who actually drive on them.

I Love New York

I wish I could include music to this entry.  It would be Madonna's "I Love New York," so if you have it press play now.  We found parking in Manhattan before we even started looking.  That in itself began the awesome weekend that I just had in the great and only city worthy of being talked about in this country, New York.  After hanging some art for my friend, we headed to Gramercy Park to catch V for Vendetta again (since he hasn't seen it) stopping on the way to get drinks at just some random place that had more people in it than most bars in Boston at 5o'clock but oh well... lol, soon!   After the movie we hopped in a cab, I glimpsed the colors of the Empire State Building and we headed to a JeanGeorges 1 Michelin star restaurant called Vong.  I still don't quite understand why the French chef wandered into the world of Thailand but whatever.  We did the tasting menu and nearly were dead by the end of it, lol.  Mm...coconut soup.  Afterwards, to lose the weight I just gained, we walked back to the UpperWestSide to sleep, lol.

Saturday morning I woke up, read and had a panic attack over an art article in the Times, downed a homemade cappuccino, and headed out to meet my friend Tate who I met on the Atlantis Cruise that I went on to Brasil.  After ditching my duffel bag at one of the fabulous Equinox gyms in the Time Warner building, we headed into Central Park for a stroll in the beautiful nearly 80 degree weather.  After we caught up and enjoyed as much sun as we could have, we attempted to hunt down a Starbucks on the UESide which turned out to be a lot more work than one could ever imagine so we ended up in the little country French (sorta chain that I can't remember the name of, with wooden tables, and a rustic look) place that makes awesome bread and hazelnut chocolate spread (it is like crack, basically).  Once we had a bite to eat, and I fully got the motivation to get a tattoo (don't we think I am a lion or a tiger or a star?), we hopped in a cab and headed to PS1 in Queens to check out the Wolfgang Tillmans show which turned out not to be that good once we got there.  HOWEVER I absolutely loved the building that it is in.  PS1 is in a renovated grammar school (Public School One) so each (very new and very contemporary) artist has what used to be a classroom to exhibit in.  It is a totally fantastic space, in fact it is one of the best I have seen to display contemp art but it is also incredibly eerie. 

PS1:  In the halls of P.S.1 one can sense the passage of time, the sound of children,     even the smell of school lunches. Its transformation from a public school     into a contemporary arts center maintains the building’s original function     as a place of gathering, learning, and enlightenment. And while certainly     other historic structures in New York City have grown old more gracefully,     P.S.1 wears its age proudly, an impressive pile of stone and brick with a     rich and somewhat scandalous history.

We finished off the museum with sitting in the sun (again) and downing an awesome iced coffee that was like a melted scoop of coffee ice cream.  So delicious.  After our little art jaunt, we headed to 14th and 9th which is basically Meatpacking district central.  If you have never been to this neighborhood, I am sorry.  It is absolutely the best in Manhattan on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon.  Just to stroll the streets is too overwhelming.  It is the top of the top, the cream of the crop, the best of the most beautiful people in Manhattan, the hottest fashion on boys around, and just rambunctious and exciting glittering energy.  We strolled around enjoying the eye candy before heading to the Hudson and to the piers which (when Manhattan was at the cusp of the raunchy rough but hotter edge) was the spot to many a hottie being sucked off, orgies being enjoyed in the sand, and well.. everything else happened underneath the docks.  I also heard stories of late night parties (and orgies) happening in empty meat delivery trucks where people would pop open the back and go to town.  Sigh, I wish I was there.   haha, but anyways.  So Tate and I headed to the redeveloped and gentrified pier to sit on the grass with the rest of Chelsea and Village.  lol, it clearly was the place to be on this Saturday afternoon, and took on the feeling of Ipanema beach on some level when a twenty something year old boy (who nearly made me look fat) stripped down and pranced around in his briefs which he decided to suntan in.  I couldn't resist taking a pic with my cell, lol.  Two hours later we headed back to his house before going to a virgin moment for me.  There are a few left ;)

That night we had tickets to the NYC Opera (check out the video if you want at that link) and it's rendition of Don Giovanni by Mozart.  It was my first time at the Opera and I had been warned that DonG wasn't one of the most approachable Opera's out there because of it's length (nearly 4 hours).  It was a story that was incredibly familiar to me, lol.  I had listened to cd recordings of the opera before I actually sat in my little velvet seat and I have to say that it didn't help, lol.  An opera is about seeing the singers belt it out in person, not so much on cdI, however, LOVED it.  The music was fantastic but that is just Mozart (unreal basically), the costumes were great yet you really weren't paying attention to them or the set.  What blew me away was how the singers created such song with just their voices.  It is incredible.  Two of the serious solo's were simply amazing.  The ability and talent that these people have is just unreal.  DonG being dragged to hell for making woman fall in love with him just to be hurt is pretty fantastic as a theme   

Sunday I woke up and headed to meet my friend Jerry by myself (in a town car, haha) for brunch.  After brunch I sat on the Great Lawn (or the Sheep's Meadow) where I swooned over a Brasilian boy playing soccer with his friends, and the city.  Yes, the city.  The Lawn is fantastic especially on a beautiful day and especially now that the first "green" building in NYC known as the  architecturally amazing Hearst building (designed by Norman Foster) is nearly finished.  It changes the skyline in such a beautiful way.  Then I had to sadly get back into the car (I nearly wanted to throw a tantrum) to drive back to the depressed, miserable angry people living in history city, we call Boston.  However, on the way back I totally fell in love with the LA Symphony and it's minamalist Andriessen recordings which basically make me think of someone living in Northern Europe going insane, lol.  It is sublime.  I am totally intrigued by post 1945 classical music now. 

Millennials

There is an article in DETAILS magazine this month titled "Has Generation X Already Peaked?" which mostly discusses how GenX'rs are getting a little lost with marketing and the world paying attention to the BabyBoomers still and/or Generation Y, nicknamed Millennials.  My generation I should note.  It turns out that the article is informative on why this is so which I will entirely not talk about here, lol, because the article was hysterical and ever so accurate when describing my generation and especially so with describing me.  Minus the self reflection thing which I do hourly, lol. 

"When your not obsessing over the mating habits of AARP members, the media beast has taken quite a fancy to another rising demographic, the millennials, Gen Y, whose bloggy, bling-bling birdsong of me-me-me-me-me sounds, to your beaten eardrums, a little bit like this:  Oh My God LindsayBritneyJessicaParisJustin OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG i just got an im from Tiffany and she told me she's breaking up with her boyfriend and i was like totally sympathetic DUH but it's like i'm thinking OMG he's totally on the market now LOL i totally need that new Fendi purse OMG did you see that episode of LagunaRunwayLoserIdolOC SO SO SOOOO AMAZING anyway i don't care if that bitch gets all bitchy with me cuz my dad is Avril's manager now and I'm gonna be CEO of Google by the time I'm 25 LOL

That's right.  The boomers BRED, and their solipsistic progeny have arrived just in time to serve you a second helping of anxiety.  To quote a brutally apt line from last year's LCD Soundsystem album, "I'm Losing My Edge.  The kids are coming up from behind." The millennials, spawned during the last days of disco, speak with none of the doubt and skepticism that have marked - and - hampered Generation X.  They just LOVE stuff.  They love celebrities.  They love technology.  They love name brands.  They love everything. They're happy to do whatever advertising tells them to do.  So what if they can't manage to read anything longer than an instant message? --that's okay!  If anything, it's an advantage.  Because literacy leads to self-reflection and critical thinking, and self-reflection and critical thinking open the door to doubt and skepticism and stuff like that just gets in the way when you're trying to get ahead, and OMG OMG did you see how fat Britney looks these days."