Glee a little too twee?

Is Fox's new fall series, Glee Club a little too twee?

I caught the pilot the other night. It was cute and inoffensive. I liked it. I thought it cute, positive and different. I can't, however, imagine watching it every week. Check out the pilot for yourself:

Glee Pilot

Please, just roll me back home

I met a former coworker for lunch today at David Chang's Momofuku Ssam Bar.

I don't even want to talk about the food, because it was too good for me to put into words. Let me just say I love chefs that love pork and offal. I love restaurants that specifically state on the menu, "We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items."

My friend and I both had the prix fixe, where we ordered different items and shared everything. As a take-small-bites-and-taste-everything-at-least-once eater, I like eating with people who can share.

My faves: Pork Buns, Blondie Pie

Afterwards, my friend and I went next door to the Milk Bar where I checked out the Marshmallow Cookie (it was ok), the Chocolate Cake, and the Banana Cake. I've decided that I like my cakes and cookies better when they're slightly warm.

My new teapot

My new kettle. It's tens of dollars less expensive than my old one, it's easy to maintain, and it works. I tried it today, and it whistled. Afterwards, nothing melted.

I had my eye on the lovely Le Creuset Ogive but decided to bypass form and function for just mere function. I'm certain my water tastes the same either way, so I won't lose sleep over it.

With the additional store credit from the original pot and a 20% off coupon, I finally bought the Wusthof knives I've been coveting for quite some time. I'd give up a fancy kettle for a handy knives any time of day. :-)

My teapot just melted

How can a company make a teapot that has an attached whistle that's not heat resistant? All I have is a melted lump of plastic where the whistle used to be...

I'm taking my teapot back. It's the second time I've had to take my teapot back (the first time, the whistle didn't work) and get a replacement teapot. This time though, I'm taking it back and leaving it there.

Word to the wise, don't buy a Chantal teapot.

He said WHAT?

At Trader Joe's this morning:

Man: "How are you today?"

Me: "Ok."

Man: "Just ok?" I shrugged. He said, "Yeah, me too. What are your plans for the rest of today?"

Me: "Eh, look for work? Run errands? Not sure yet. It's nice out."

Man: "What do you want to do?"

Me: "I wish I knew. Suggestions?"

Man: "You look like a swimmer. Maybe you can be a lifeguard."

K, M and Montie in Philly

I go to Philly to have dinner with college bestie K, her bf M, and their cute doggie Montie. K's getting her MSW and is usually crazy busy, so it was good to see her.

Sharing PBRs with K and M.

Montie offers me one of his toys. :)

K suprised me with two more pairs of split toe socks. I love split toe socks!

He said WHAT?

I wonder if there's something about me that just screams IF YOU'RE A STALKER, COME TALK TO ME.

I had a meeting in midtown today. As I waited in line at the security desk at the lobby, the man in front of me offered to pass my ID to the security desk. I almost handed him my ID, and then he laughed and said he was joking. He did, however, want my information so he could call me some time.

I "laughed" and politely told him I didn't think it was a good idea.

Unfortunately for me, we ended up in the same elevator together (with a poor woman who tried to pretend she was invisible). The man was very persistent and asked again if he could have my contact information.

Once again, I said, "NO."

He asked why I wouldn't give it to him. Since I was in an elevator, it was extremely awkward and uncomfortable for me to continue to have a conversation that I clearly didn't want to have, and I couldn't leave, I tried to be polite and make a joke out of it.

"I woke up this morning and decided that I wasn't providing my contact information to anyone today. Sorry," I told him.

He promised that he'd be back tomorrow to sit in the lobby and wait for me all day.

"Well," I said, "seems like it might be hard for you to get any work done that way."

It reminds me of someone I dated someone briefly last spring. Let's call him X.

X pushed things between us to become serious and exclusive (I'm not a huge fan of exclusive dating. What's the point, unless I plan on marrying someone?), and then quickly decided things weren't working out because he needed "to be free and to see what else was out there." This was after he already already made ridiculous declarations of his love for me within our first month of dating (which made me extremely uncomfortable because WHO DOES THAT?!?).

While I wasn't particularly happy that X had insisted I jump through hoops to "commit to an exclusive relationship with him" when I clearly didn't want to be exclusive only for him to realize that he needed to be "free," I didn't object too much because if I were honest, I agreed with him. Plus, I don't want to be with anyone who needs to see "what else is out there" before knowing if they want to be with me. If they haven't already figured it out, then they ought to go find out without my participation.

X was an inappropriate partner for me in every way possible. The only reason we began to date was because I had just ended a very important relationship with A (who is amazing and now a close friend), and I was in a vulnerable state. X had been persistently pursuing me for over a year, and he happened to call and ask me out at a time where it was hard for me to say no.

A month after X ended things, he came back and wanted to try again because he thought he had made a mistake, and he missed me. I had started to come out of my A-break-up-induced funk by then, and I didn't cooperate with X's attempts to restart things because he wasn't someone I wanted to be with. I was polite. I went through the motions of going on a date with X, but...eh.

I don't trust wishy washy people, especially men. There's something about wishy-washy men that reminds me of temperamental children. They always want the shiniest and newest toys, but they lose interest quickly. I've heard my share of stories about wishy-washy men who decide, after 20 years of marriage, a mortgage and 3 children, that married life isn't for them. It's sad and a little selfish for them to make that decision with disregard for how their actions will affect their ex-wives and children. If that's the way they felt, perhaps they ought to have realized that before having a family? Anyone who starts throwing "I love you" around after only a month of dating someone is one of those men.

After X's second attempt to "date" me, I didn't hear from him for a while. Then, I ran into him a few times, and we were polite to each other each time. I had no hard feelings towards him, and I can't imagine that he'd me mad at me in any way. The last time I ran into him, he called me within minutes of seeing me to ask if I wanted to stop by his home to check out ___________ (insert whatever hook here, like art, gadget, whatever). I may have an annoying tendency to take people at face value, but I am not completely naive. I politely declined.

Since then, X occasionally emails, texts or calls (and usually leaves vmails, since I almost always screen calls unless I'm in a rush). It seems to happen about once a month, probably when he's a little bored and lonely and wonders where his friends are or what everyone's up to. According to my apartment super, a man fitting X's description even stopped by my apartment once to ask if I still lived there. Every once in a while (about three or four times now), I'll get a voicemail from X telling me he's at my gym and hoping to run into me. (I live in the West Village, he lives on the East side, and we both have gyms within 2 blocks of our respective apartments.) While I want to tell X to bugger off, I don't because we operate in similar social circles and I would prefer things to remain friendly. But, I do think that X is a stalker if I've seen one.

Happy birthday, K!

I haven't seen K in over two years. We went to college together. He and his lovely wife are expecting their second child in a month. It was so wonderful to get to celebrate his birthday with him!

K celebrates his 32nd bday in K-town.

This commercial cracks me up

Chuck Strikes Again!!!

http://www.romaniantimes.at/index.php?id=509

Happy birthday, MN!

MN re-celebrates her 29th birthday at the White Slab Palace.


With A.

With A, M and MN.

Right in my own back yard...

The biggest mistake one can make upon exiting the B at the last stop, inhaling undertow-flavored air and narrowly passing a man in a fake Gucci shirt and a rabbit hat hawking caviar from a foldable outdoor table, is to assume that you’re seeing a passable facsimile of Russia. Brighton Beach is far more interesting. What you’re actually getting is a kind of double-blind guess— a Jewish immigrant’s idea of what an American’s idea of Russia may be. And that’s what makes it arguably the most fascinating ethnic enclave in New York: It looks just as exotic to the ethnicity it enclaves.

Like its freak cousin Coney Island, the neighborhood known as Little Odessa is as much a state of mind as a location: stuck between two worlds, with its own culture, slang, radio, TV, magazines, and illicit pharmaceutical industry (think less meth and more FDA-unapproved heart drops). It’s too singular and ornery to be a true tourist trap. Unlike Little Italy, with its defanged Mafia lore, Brighton Beach frowns at suggestions the “Russian mob” has ever even existed; its secrets are still secrets, and its past is never far away.

http://nymag.com/guides/everything/brighton-beach/

Welcome to the jungle...

NYC used to be fun and games of another sort. This is what Manhattan used to look like before white people showed up...

http://digg.com/d1tJFy

Even better than LOLCATS!!!!

OK, just kidding b/c nothing can ever top LOLCATS in that saccharin hurt your teeth way, but this comes pretty darn close:

http://www.latfh.com/


Although more in a hurt your eyes and your brain sort of way.

Ah, you fucking hipster. How is it possible that I both love and hate you...

Not sure what the big deal is

but I've read about this place.

The Gates, gorgeous in its chandelier and marble splendor, was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. There's standard front bar area and a medium sized room in the back that's lined with banquets and tables for those who love bottle service.


A friend and I were there Sunday night for an "exclusive afterparty." It was so exclusive, that it was mostly dead even by Sunday night party that start at 10pm standards. But, it was open bar, which is the real reason to show up anywhere, especially a place that is calling itself a super luxury restaurant/bar:

On May 8, Danny Kane and Rod Surut (Naked Lunch, Gemini Lounge) will reopen one of the city’s truly lavish spaces, the former Biltmore Room (the marble walls alone have been valued at $2.4 million) as a “super luxury restaurant/bar,” the Gates. Promotional director Redd Stylez (Home, Guest House, Cain) is overseeing an “ambassador” program that awards keys (the lockets double as pens or bracelets and don’t actually open the front gates, which used to belong to the Biltmore Hotel in midtown) to 125 members of the “New York City elite.”

Um, seriously? What the heck is "super luxury"? Who is New York City elite?

Give me a break.

My favorite part of the announcement isn't so much the Gates as much as this reaction:
...each member will receive a gold enema necklace that can actually inform the doorman that the person coming his way is the king of all douche bags... give me a freaking break. To be seen in the next season of the Real Housewives of Jersey City.
By onestopnyc on 04/21/2009 at 7:26pm

Agreed!

Profile of a pocket rocket

Asked which tattoo is his favorite, [Nate Robinson] hesitates. Then, pointing to a leg, he says, “Well, I like this one down here. It’s brand-new.”

It is a large cross with the words GAME TIME below.

“That’s not ‘game time,’ ” Robinson corrects. “It’s G.A.M.E. Time … God Asks for Me Every Time.”

Nate Robinson Blasts Off

R gets old

After K and S' wedding shindig, I head over the the Empire Hotel to celebrate R's birthday. He's doing it up in style with bottle service and a whole crew of friends. The line to the hotel rooftop bar is ridiculous, and I'm so tired I almost head home. D slips the bouncer a twenty, and we bypass the line.

With G and M on the rooftop.

Wedding at St Barts

After returning from Connecticut to cheer T on in her competition, I head home to change clothes and head out again to K and S' wedding at St. Bart's Church. The service and reception were beautifully done.

This is M and me at the reception, which began with drinks and nibbles on the outside patio of St Barts. We later went inside the reception hall for dinner and dancing.

T competes in Miss Fitness Atlantic

www.fitnessatlantic.com

And I go to cheer her on.

(In case you were wondering, T is on the left.)

Happy birthday, M!

M celebrates his 34th with a family brunch at X Restaurant and Bully Boy Bar. It was lovely to spend time with M and his family.

Brunch was amazing. I'm now a huge fan of Peter Xaviar Kelly, Iron Chef winner. I look forward to visiting his other restaurants.

M's birthday creme brulee.

Will the Real Slim Shady please stand up?

Forget about Bernie Madoff for a minute. Let's talk about Marc Dreier. His story is the stuff movies are made about. I can't believe it's not getting as much press as Madoff.

http://nymag.com/news/features/55863/

Dreier’s motives were at once shallow and profound. Even by New York standards, he was wildly ambitious. It wasn’t enough for him to be a successful lawyer; he had to be the most successful lawyer in town, and he needed everyone else to know about it. You could see his obsession reflected in the $10 million Beacon Court condominium, the fully staffed $18 million 123-foot yacht, the $40 million in Warhols and Lichtensteins and other artworks, the Aston Martin, BMW, and two Mercedes, the two Hamptons homes, the Anguilla property, the Park Avenue headquarters with his name emblazoned on the side, the star-studded charity golf tournament, the girls. When he’d couldn’t come by all of that honestly, it seems, he found another way. The whole operation was audacious to the point of sheer recklessness—from the start, he was just one due-diligence phone call from being found out—yet the very boldness of his plan was central to its success. Who would believe that such a respected and apparently successful attorney would knowingly peddle hundreds of millions of dollars worth of nothing?

...

After law school, Dreier went to work as a white-collar defense litigator at the New York firm Rosenman & Colin. “He was one of the shining stars,” says Donald Citak, a former colleague. “He was ambitious, bright, and full of energy—hyper but personable.” Dreier pitched on the company softball team and was always up for drinks, often at the Beach Café at 70th Street and Second Avenue, a few blocks from his bachelor apartment on York Avenue. But even Dreier’s friends didn’t fully trust him. “He never put other people’s interests first,” one friend says, “and he’d make no bones about it. Part of him wanted to have friends, but all of him wanted to be admired.”

...

Blake Lewis beatboxes Bon Jovi

I have a man crush on this guy because he can beatbox AND dance. Double threat!

Er, buy low, sell high?

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/04/12/skype-founders-look-to-make-a-deal-with-ebay/

You have to love the way mergers and acquisitions work. The Skype founders sold Skype to eBay for $3.1 billion and investment bankers collected millions in fees. Now the founders are hoping to buy the company back for far less money and investment bankers will collect millions more in fees. Meanwhile, eBay shareholders have been taken to the cleaners and no value was created.

So true

A friend recently wrote an extremely insightful piece about being ok to be mediocre or to fail. It spoke to me because I often put so much internal pressure for me to meet my own standards at everything I do, that I end up over analyzing or over stressing myself out to the point where I am paralyzed by fear of failure and can't make a decision. It's one of the reasons I no longer play the violin, it's one of the reasons I don't play team sports, and it's been one of the central reasons why I haven't been aggressive about looking for work. It's good to be reminded that failure can sometimes be a victory. It's ok to be mediocre, it's ok to fail, because it gives room for improvement. I thought I'd share his words with you:

Instead of writing about massage this month, I thought I'd tell you about my student teaching I've been doing this spring. After 6 intense but successful weeks at a performing arts high school, I've spent the past couple of weeks at an elementary school. I don't mind telling you those kids have been kicking my butt! While it's true that I get along with the youngin's very well as individuals or in pairs, I seem to be less successful when there are 25 of them in a classroom. I was kind of caught off guard by this fact. After all, back in the day I used to counsel camp without any trouble, so how different could it be?

Let me tell you, it's different. First of all, camp has a completely different discipline code from school. At camp, a bit of hyper-activity is accepted. From my memories, it was even encouraged. It's part of camp culture, and the good news is it only takes about 2 minutes to realize that this doesn't translate so well to the school environment. The bad news is, by then it's too late. It takes a far subtler skill than I currently possess to regain control of a roomful of kids who think your exasperated efforts are a funny game. (The teacher I work with can do this as if he has a magic wand- I have no idea how!)

The second difference is, when I was 18 years old, I was often still able to work under the assumption that I could do anything; if no one got seriously maimed, I must have done a good job. I didn't get trapped by my own self-awareness, and in return I did things more naturally, learning new skills without stress or burnout.

Eighteen was about the age my self-awareness started catching up to me. Through most of my 20's, with everything I did, every new skill I learned, I tried too hard, thought too much. At first I got a lot of praise for this, but eventually I started to run into brick walls. Tension started catching up with me, and I began getting worse at all the things I wanted to get better at. About the time I started massage, I began to figure out the error of my ways. As I learned that new skill, I also started learning how not try too hard, how to give myself space to be mediocre or downright bad at something, then calmly and slowly figure out how to make it better. Then I could usually find the balance between instinct and analysis, and gradually improve.

Nowadays, learning a new skill is a strange and interesting process. Particularly when the skill is one you have to learn publicly. As a teacher, you can't hide when you don't know what you are doing, and your audience is not going to be patient and polite while you figure it out. And so everytime I step in front of a class, it is a nervous, stressful experience. On the other hand, I've done enough things badly at this point in my life that I'm not scared of being scared anymore. Part of me can step back, watch myself in the third person, and enjoy seeing the process unfold. This allows me to jump in and take risks with the same sort of abandon I did when I was a teenager; only this time I have a better sense of where I want to go and how to try to get there.

Will I be able to figure it out with the elementary schoolers? Will I be able to find the magic my teacher possesses? I don't know. I may not have the time to find out. To the relief of all the mothers reading this, I hope to work at the high school level. But either way I've got a lot of learning to do. I don't know a teacher of any age-group whose first year was not a stressful, steep learning curve. I can only hope do it smoothly as possible, and still find enjoyment in the process. Even on the days I'm no good at it.

The U.S. Economy as told through a game of Monopoly

From K.

Ophir Kutiel's cool funk mashups

I read about this in the New Yorker, so I decided to look it up on youtube. It's pretty cool.

This looks cool

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West

March 29, 2009–June 8, 2009

Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West examines how photography has pictured the idea of the American West from 1850 to the present. Photography's development coincided with the exploration and the settlement of the West, and their simultaneous rise resulted in a complex association that has shaped the perception of the West's physical and social landscape to this day. For over 150 years, the image of the West has been formed and changed through a variety of photographic traditions and genres, and this exhibition considers the medium's role in shaping our collective imagination of the West.

Into the Sunset brings together over 120 photographs made by a variety of photographers. These works illustrate photography's role in popularizing ideas of the sublime landscape, Manifest Destiny, and the "land of opportunity," as well as describing a more complex vision of the West, one that addresses cultural dislocation, environmental devastation, and failed social aspirations. Organized thematically, Into the Sunset includes photographs dating from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, incorporating a range of artistic strategies, motifs, and concerns, and featuring the work of approximately seventy photographers, including Robert Adams, John Baldessari, Dorothea Lange, Timothy O'Sullivan, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Edward Weston, and Carleton E. Watkins. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog.

---

Organized by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, Department of Photography.

The The Impotence of Proofreading

It only does what you tell it to douche...

my american dream

my parents were the first people in their families to finish high school and go to college.
for dad to finish high school, his older sisters had to drop out of school and go to work so they could support his studies. mom finished high school, but didn't go to college until years later, when dad had finished getting his degree here in the US. by then, k and i were already in grade school.

we immigrated to the US when i was 6 and k was 2. i often ask myself why we moved to the US. dad tells me it's because he wanted to provide a better life for his family, which is why he decided to apply to schools in the US. although it still stumps me why he happened to apply (and get accepted) to a university in one of the most intolerant and fundamentally religious states in the continental US, because that was probably not the best start to a better life for his family.

our first eight years in the US weren't really the better life dad envisioned. we scraped by on the grace of the Salvation Army, food stamps, the National School Lunch Program, ramen noodles, inexpensively priced overripe bananas, boiled potatoes wrapped in foil so we could take it with us whenever for when we needed a snack, and roadtrip vacations sleeping in our woody station wagon at inexpensive campgrounds.

when mom would get mad at dad over some perceived infidelity that happened over 10 years ago, it would start with yelling. when dad wouldn't respond, she'd throw things. usually dinner. and when that didn't get a rise out of him, she'd start to throw dishes and appliances. i always knew the outcome of those fights. inevitably, she would kick dad and me out of the small cinderblock box that the university called graduate housing. dad and i would spend what my small child-brain thought were weeks but were in reality probably mere days showering at the university gym and sleeping and studying at the university library.

the university library had a small selection of childrens books, Highlights, and Jack and Jills, so while dad studied, i read and reread every single child's book i could find. my favorite story was the one of pocahontas. not the real story of pocahontas, because if i had known of the crappy things that the white people did to the brown people-that-lived-in-North-America-before-white-people-came-and-screwed-things-up and how women were treated like property, i would have probably felt differently about pocahontas.

the story that i read and reread was of the indian chief's daughter who falls in love with a white person, marries him, goes back to his country where she meets the queen and is a success, thereby sticking it to the man. it was a girl empowerment book full of adventure and romance. for a chinese girl who barely spoke english and was ridiculed for her accent and clothes, it embodied the american dream.

How Michael Osinsky helped blow up Wall Street

by building the CDO software that helped create the real estate feeding frenzy that played a vital role in putting the world economy where it is today.

It's an interesting article: http://nymag.com/news/business/55687/

How does that saying go again? Put shit in, and you get shit out.