Best Additional Collin-related Activities

Listen, I've been trying to tell you that Collin was in town last weekend.  Friday night we met up at La Cabaña/La Casa de los Tacos, just like old times, with all our homies, just like old times.

The pictures don't look it, but there were so many Collin-fans in attendance we had to use some overflow tables.

I had a torta al pastor, a chorizo taco, and a chicken tostada.  That was not nearly enough, so Collin and I decided to split a torta Cubana.

 

What I think we have here is bacon, egg, beef milanesa, chicken, cheese, another meat or two, lettuce, tomato, avocado, jalepeños and mayo.

There's my roommate Derrin!

Sunday at church Collin kept making his blind contour portraits (that means when you don't look at the paper while you're drawing) and this one is of President Buckner . . . if you even needed me to tell you that.

Monday night we got RUB burgers at RUB.  We attacked them, we destroyed them.

 

Such a wonderful burger, about four out of five times.

And that's all the Collin pictures I've got (besides these ones) but go over to his blog to see more of his drawings from the weekend.  You'll like them!

Best It Is TV Time Again

Fall TV is totally here again!  It crept up quite sneakily this year, which is great, I hate having to wait for my Fall TV.  I would like to share my quick and short assessments of the shows I've watched/been watching:

2 Broke Girls: First episode was surprisingly not terrible and made me want to watch the second episode.  I watched the second episode, it was horrible.  I will give this show one episode more.

Up All Night: This show is good, I will keep watching it.  You keep throwing GOB at a sitcom and eventually he'll stick.

The Office: I liked the season premiere.  I'm interested in how things will go in this post-Michael Scott world.  I liked chubby Pam, I liked Erin post-planking, I liked Dwight the enforcer.

Parks and Recreation: My favorite show, but I didn't care for the season premiere.  Hold on!  Obviously I liked Ron's speedy escape at the beginning of the episode.  Of course I did.  And I understand that this episode was setting the stage for the rest of the season, I'll allow for that . . . but it wasn't very funny or good.  I don't expect it to stay that way, though.

Community: And here's a show that I'm not always into (I think it's just too precious for its own good, too in love with itself) that made a surprisingly good setting of the stage first episode of the season episode that I did enjoy.  Probably just a fluke.  I'll keep trying to remember to watch every week.

30 Rock: Didn't start yet.  That's fine with me.  I don't always remember to watch 30 Rock.

Modern Family: Okay.  You know what?  I don't care about you, Modern Family.  Someone tell me if there's ever a real funny episode, until then you can keep having your three storylines per episode and sappy endings and I'll keep doing something else with my Wednesday nights.  Like writing blog posts.  About TV shows.

It feels good to have these things off my chest.

Best Talk I Wasn't Invited To

How come nobody told me that President Uchtdorf dropped some major analysis of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in his Relief Society Conference talk Saturday night?

". . . In this classic children’s story, people all over the world desperately yearn to find a golden ticket. Some feel that their entire future happiness depends on whether or not a golden ticket falls into their hands. In their anxiousness, people begin to forget the simple joy they used to find in a candy bar. The candy bar itself becomes an utter disappointment if it does not contain a golden ticket."


The whole thing is real good.

Best People, Best Neighborhood

By now maybe you know or maybe you figured out that Collin was in town for the weekend.  All of New York rejoiced.  These are pictures from Saturday when we were hanging out in my neighborhood.

Walking down Lafayette we ran into Victoria, Lars' sister-in-law.

Collin came back from California really wanting to draw all the time.  Probably for his blog.  Or his job.

His thing right now is blind contour line portraits.  Can you guess who this is?

How about now?  Now can you guess?  COME ON!  Guess harder!

Here is the place where Collin ran his first errand for a certain famous director so many years ago.  A certain famous director who is very particular about his lampshades.  And his stop motion fox movies.  But I'm not going to give you any clues about who it is.

This reminds me!  I saw Band of Outsiders again a couple weeks ago at the Film Forum.  It was great, a definite four star movie . . . but also, I realized that Breathless is so much better.  How can there be such a disparity between four star movies?  I'd say one had to be a five star movie but I won't because I'm also the sort of person who doesn't believe in triple black diamond ski runs.  Just black diamond.  Nothing more.

Then it was time to teach San Gennaro a lesson.

What?  You think all those famous San Gennaro coconuts split themselves?

Rasta Banana.  My friend, my tormentor.

"Tell me more about this kingdom" said Collin.

For lunch I had the Rubirosa braciole sandwich.  The most "Ehh" of the fancy food I had at San Gennaro.

Collin, however, ordered the Whole Shebang from Byggyz and it was served to him by American Top Chef Wylie Dufresne.  Because it's his Dad's sandwich shop.

The man and his Shebang.

This is the Brrrwich ice cream sandwich.  It was pepperminty.

Post-lunching, some art further up Mulberry.

Classic SUVs in the East Village.

And more blind contours, whether those pigeons liked it or not.

And that's that for my afternoon in the neighborhood with Collin.

"But wait!  I've got another afternoon to tell you about!" (imagine that's a word balloon coming from this picture)

Because Pearl was in town the other weekend and we walked around my neighborhood, too.

Mostly I just pointed at things or held things, though.

(get a closer look at this one . . .)

But also we had La Esquina

and also I discovered that I can't leave hotel lobbies alone

And also we dabbled in a little San Gennaro.

This was in front of my house for a week and a half!

In conclusion: I really, really need someone to help me learn to post-process my pictures better.  Why does everything look so reddish?  What can I do?

Best Stick a Harpoon in Me, I'm Done

So I'd been reading Moby Dick and Sunday night I finished Moby Dick and now I can't stop thinking about Moby Dick.  First, the book has the strangest narrative shift from the first section of the book, which is all about Melville and Queequeg in Nantucket and is really funny and quite entertaining, to the second, where Melville and Queequeg nearly disappear from the story altogether (nearly) except for a handful of key scenes.  I thought of it at first as a very literal literary representation of their assimilation into the machinations of sea life and their duties aboard the Pequod . . . but now I've been thinking about the contrast in the book between land and sea, land as a knowable, finite, bounded space and sea as mysterious, unknowable, and infinite—what better way to impress the unknowable nature of the sea upon the reader than to snatch away his two key points of reference?  

And also, what to make of Melville's encyclopedic descriptions of sperm whales, the detailing and describing of nearly every part of their bodies?  Especially after Melville has established that the faceless sperm whale is as inexplicable and unknowable as the sea?  Well, what do we work to explain more than that which we can't explain?  What do we try to know better than that which we can't know?  You know? 

Man, Melville.  You did a number on me!

And also, how exciting is the final chase of Moby Dick?  After so much build up it's almost a horror story and finally Dracula arrives.  When Melville is describing Moby swimming up from under the water towards the little boat, growing bigger and bigger, mouth open?  So much inescapable power!  So little the little humans can do about their fate coming straight at them!

Sheesh, I wish I knew how much I liked this book while I was reading it.

For a more artful assessment of the novel, consider Jeff's thoughts.

Best Right in the Middle of the Action

Have you heard of the #occupywallstreet protestors?  The leaderless mass of protestors who encamped on Broadway last week to protest the personhood of corporations . . . and every other cause that comes to mind?  Saturday they took their cause on the road and marched up to Union Square, where I happened to be.

Everything was so calm at first . . .



Then, with the sound of beating drums, the #occupywallstreeters began to arrive via University Place, clearly a ship without a rudder, unsure if it was going to stop at Union Square or what it was going to do when it got there.

Perhaps it did, but someone taught you to draw fists well.

Certain Union Square'rs remained unphased by the whole thing.

And certain Union Square figures just assumed it was a party.

So the protestors formed a central mass for a while, shouted things for a while, and danced the Hokey Pokey.  (I am serious)

Chalk was quickly deployed in a very anti-establishment manner.

This guy actually kept a pretty good beat.

After a bit the marchers were ready to go somewhere else.  They headed for Broadway at first, where there was a street fair at the time, which would have clearly resulted in a stampede/total disaster/complete cluster bomb (so, you know, a little worse than a normal NYC street fair) but the cops cut them off and saved everyones lives . . . and tackled their first few protestors who couldn't believe their right to assemble would be impeded in such a way as to protect other people or their property.

Not mannequins, spectators.

So the marchers headed back down University or something and everything got back to normal in Union Square.  Nice and normal.





Later on I ran into a large procession of another sort on my way home.  I liked this one better.