Best Hoboken Adventure (with Thursday and Saturday Overlap)

Before getting started on Friday, it's worth noting that Thursday night I had dinner at one of those Mexican places on 4th street where the food is so much better as leftovers than as dinner with Erin, Karisa, and Josh. I imagined that the outing could have spawned an entire post's-worth of photos and captions, but left the meal with only one quality shot, this one of Erin enjoying her fancy Mexican drink.



Friday night Shane and Jen Holmes came down from DC to see Holly Golightly at Maxwell's in Hoboken. If you've heard me talk about Hoboken, you know that it makes me think of San Diego.



Just don't tell San Diego that I said that.



But you could say that I don't really know Hoboken or San Diego all that well.



Still, there are things in Hoboken that are distinctly Jersey-ish, like the snow-spouting flower in this store window.



And these quality t-shirts for Hoboken tourists and enthusiasts alike.



Also, Hoboken features creepy churches.



And bars that make me think of, you know, San Diego.



And there's an Elks Lodge. I haven't seen the San Diego Elks Lodge, but it's probably alot like this one.



Holly had two opening bands that I used to listen to a bit back in 1995. It's hard to believe that people like the Insomniacs are still together, and funny to think that the great Garage-explosion of 2001/2002 completely passed over all my "favorite" garage bands from back then.



After the Insomniacs we snuck out for some surprisingly decent sushi.





We still made it back to the club in time to catch most of the Woggle's set. The Woggles do not concern themselves with the line most bands draw between stage and audience and performed a great deal of their set from the middle of the club, which often surprised the less-attentive concertgoers.



When the King of the Woggles tells you to "get down", he means it.



Dude was old, but really had some energy in him, like a cleaned-up Lux Interior.



Eventually the entire band (except for the drummer, of course) was in the audience.



The Woggles were surprisingly great. I'd see them on their own if they ever come around.



Back in the fall of 2002 I saw Holly Golightly in San Diego. In all honesty, it was a pretty lousy show and it didn't seem like she played a single song that I knew. However, Friday night's show at Maxwell's was excellent and a near-complete tour of all of her greatest hits.



Is Holly married to the bassist? Isn't that the rumor? Or is she married to a Greenhorn? Or am I making this all up?



Over there on the left playing guitar is Bruce Brand, the drummer from Thee Headcoats. Dude is hilarious. There were a fair number of Headcoats and Hangman Records t-shirts in the crowd. I want a Hangman Records t-shirt.



Jen was experienced a total superfan explosion all night. She was well into the show and got Holly's autograph after the show and they had a little chat and everything.




As it got later the crowd thinned out quite a bit and it wasn't a trick getting closer to the stage.



So many bottles of water were bought from the bar that night. Like, at least four.



After the show we drove back into town through the Holland Tunnel. We were at my place by 2:30ish, which was perfect, because I had to get up the "next morning" at 4:50.



Saturday afternoon I went with the Holmeses to one of those crazy Indian places on First Avenue, because that's what I do with visitors. (I know, you were expecting us to go to Peep, I mixed it up a bit.)



I've become nothing but another East Coast Shark Attack statistic.



Our waiter was indeed appreciative that we chose his restaurant from all the options.



It was great having the Holmeses around for a bit. Who knows, maybe a year from now I'll be reporting on visiting them in lovely Albania.

Best Trip Back Two Years

Friday New York was abuzz with Harry Potter anticipation. And Saturday the subways were filled with people pouring over thick purple hardbacks, and on Sunday church was full of girls with that same thick purple hardback poking out of their purses. And of course, if you know me, you probably know that I am just about impervious to Potter-mania. I gave the first chapter of the first book a shot six years ago and never got further than that. But I don't consider myself a hater, and find the Potter-obsessions of others amusing.

For example, two years ago when I was spending the summer in San Marino I took my cousin Katharine to Borders for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Book that Came Out Before The Newest One. The place swarmed with obsessed children, preteens, teens, young adults, adults, and senior citizens. They were all playing Harry Potter trivia games and eating Harry Potter popcorn and walking around the bookstore. Some people even killed the time others spent in rapt anticipation by thumbing through books that weren't Harry Potter.



My goodness, look at all those muggles!



Ultimately, it turned out that pre-ordering your latest Potter-tome at the Pasadena Borders did not ensure that you would receive your Potter book quickly or without confusion, but by 1:30 or so Katharine finally had her book and we left with our cousinly-friendship still intact, but only just barely. (It gets so stressful listening to the numbers being announced and getting your book and buying your book!)



I spent 45 minutes that night thumbing through the book to see who died that time. Yesterday I only had to thumb through the new book for about 3 minutes before I found out who died this time. (It's Jar Jar)

As opposed to last week and some of the week before, this week I have a surplus of content to post on. An enormous account of Thursday night-Friday night-Saturday afternoon may be posted later today, and an equally gigantic relating of Saturday night should appear tomorrow. So there you are, warned.

Best Little Park Outing

Sometimes, like Wednesday evening, I come home from work and think: "Hmm. Maybe I'll spend all night hanging out in my apartment? Or maybe I'll go to the park and meet all the Mormons and listen to the Philharmonic. No, that's crazy, I'd rather stay home alone tonight." But next thing I know I decide to risk it and head up to the park. And I'm glad I did because, despite rainy looking clouds, the weather was good and the company was good and the music was good. Much better than things would have been alone in my apartment, that's for sure.

Patricia was there. I photographed her with a setting that I didn't even know my camera had. There's her sister Stephanie in the background.



Once you've found your space on a blanket it's hard to get close to people you know to take their pictures. So I had to work really hard to coordinate this zoomed-in photo of Candace and Bryant.



And this picture of Becky and Kelly.



Of course there were lots and lots more people there that I knew, but they were all too far away or too busy eating cheese to photograph. That's the thing to do in parks, you know, eat cheese.

Behind us the city was lost in a Ghostbustery mess of clouds. No photo could do it justice--I took many trying.



I split the concert a little early to beat the rush and ran into Lisa from High School on the subway platform, and she had just run into her friend Margaret. That's pretty crazy for Lisa, a double-coincidental-run-into.

Best Way to Start the Day?

I thought I was late to work. But I'm the only one here. Did I miss a memo? What I wouldn't have done for another 15 minutes in bed this morning.

I think I'll take this extra time I've got alone to try to memorize my three co-workers' names.

Sorry. Clearly I'm feeling guilty about not posting and now I'll post anything.

UPDATE It turns out they were all late because they all live on the Upper West Side and the subway was running extra-slow because a building fell down. I suppose that's a pretty good reason.

Best Excuse I Can Make

Well, the writer's block that came upon me last week hasn't quite lifted, so that's why I haven't been posting very much. Also, I just started a second job where I share a large cubicle with my co-workers and the work is constant, so that means no on-the-job blogging. (My habit had been to upload my photos from home at night and then caption them during the morning at my other job.) But last night I went to the park and it was pretty decent and I took a few photos. With luck, I could be posting about that tonight. Have a good day.

Best Pair of Enormous Walks

Saturday morning I woke up with the desire to walk. A lot. So I did. From my house I walked over to 8th Avenue, then up to 23rd street, east on 23rd to Park, down Park to Broadway, down Broadway to 4th street, across 4th street to Lafayette, down Lafayette to Grand (or was it Broome?), along that street to Mercer, up Mercer to Prince, west on Prince to 6th Avenue, up 6th Avenue to Bedford, west on Bedford to 7th, down to Leroy, along Leroy to Greenwich street, up Greenwich to 11th, along 11th to 6th, then up to 12th and back home again. It was like 4 hours.

During the Chelsea portion of my walk I examined one of the best Neck Faces in town up close. While simple, this one takes the cake.



Maybe you've heard, there's a 7-11 in the city now, at Park and 23rd. Visiting it was one of the purposes of my walk. You'll never know how much you love 7-11 until you live somewhere without 7-11s and then suddenly get to have a 7-11 again. Did I get a Slurpee? Of course. Did I get a Go-Go Taquito? Unfortunately.



Like I've said before, I'm just not feeling as clicky as I used to with the camera, so I hardly took any pictures on my hike. But I did take a picture of this driveway, make sure not to block it, because someone might need to drive that car soon.



Things of note about my afternoon walk: I went to a comic book store. It was sunny and beautiful almost all of the time, but it rained like crazy for about 30 minutes. I was one of the only people on the street who had an umbrella on them, you see, I've gotten into the habit of checking the weather before going out because I'm learning you just can't trust New York. In Soho I saw Willem Dafoe walking down the street with arms all around a curly-haired girl wearing huge sunglasses. In the West Village I noticed a nice, big public pool I didn't know existed before and admired it (and smelled the sweet chlorine) for a while. And on Greenwich I passed Maggie Gyllenhaal walking down the street. She was smiling and laughing as she talked on her hands-free and for a few seconds it seemed maybe she was smiling and laughing at/with me. Not this time.

In the evening I accepted an offer from Karisa to meet up with her and Josh and two friends of Josh's to walk across the bridge and eat at Grimaldi's. I took the wrong subway down and found myself battling with downtown downtown to find the bridge.

Nearing the bridge, I wound up in the park in front of City Hall. I didn't know it was like New Orleans in there. And I say it was like New Orleans because it reminded me of Pirates of the Caribbean, if you follow me.



In the park there were lit-up pictures by the guy who did the cover for the Best of Blur album. My no-flash shots turned out awful, so here they are, totally flashed-out.



There were little buildings in the park.



Like I said, little buildings.



And big buildings outside of the park.



So we all met up (even Patricia), walked across the bridge, waited for pizza, ate pizza (totally not pictured), and then hung out down by the bridge for a bit.



Like I said, the bridge.



The people at the River Cafe were all singing "You're Just Too Good to Be True," and if that's not really the name of the song, I hope you know what song I'm talking about.



And over there is Manhattan.



Of all the pictures I took this day, for some reason I like this picture of the ground the most.



I tried my best to take a great picture of Patricia to make her more famous.



And here's my one bit of photographic evidence that I was out with a group of people. Like I said, not very clicky these days.



You know how I am, won over by simple graffiti from time to time.

Best "Finally, Something to Post About"

Despite some excellent suggestions for content, I remained block for another day . . . but then, after work today, I did some minor adventuring and am happy with the results.

Now, when I first came to New York I was always thrilled to see breakdancers on the street and could watch them for, well, minutes on end. But then I noticed that they were always doing the same dance moves the same way and became bored with them. And it didn't take me too long to go from being bored with breakdancers to annoyed by them. If you've walked through the city with me, you've probably noticed I'm quicker to avoid a group of breakdancers than I am a persistent leafleteer or belligerent panhandler. I've even turned to encouraging people to ignore breakdancers (in hopes that this will force them to work out new moves and whatnot, although I suppose I wouldn't know if they had new moves or not if I didn't stop to check them out, hmm . . .) so imagine my joy when I saw this sight this afternoon:



Yes, a band of breakdancers by the fountain by the Plaza with absolutely no one paying them any attention! Finally!



But seriously, good luck guys, I wish you the best of luck in inventing awesome new moves that will blow all of New York's mind.

Columbus Circle is finally "open" again. It reminds me of the center of Washington Square Park, but with more traffic.



It's kind of cool, Columbus and the Time Warner Center.



And the monument features some serious old school statue language:



Joy and Glory/Never Uttered a More Thrilling Call/Than That Which Resounded From The Conquered Ocean/In Sight of the First American Island/Land! Land!

And regarding the man himself:



To Christopher Columbus/The Italian Resident in America/Scoffed at Before/During the Voyage, Menaced/After It, Chained/As Generous as Oppressed/To the World He Gave a World

Say what you will about your invasions of America, "To the World He Gave a World" is a pretty great line.

And behind the Trump International I noticed a statue I had never noticed before. Possibly the best representation of two souls cast into a lone and dreary world that you'll find on the streets of New York.



Then I took a field trip with Ashley to B&H Photo, which is pretty much the Disney Land (or should I say Diagon Alley?) of camera stores.



If you're thinking that a camera store couldn't possibly be a valid destination for an early-evening's worth of entertainment, you really ought to check B&H out, and maybe you'll get it.



(In my hand I am holding a little piece of candy. There are bowls of candy all over the store. It's pretty good candy. I probably ate 800 pieces of it)

Best I'm Stumped, What Should I Do?

I find myself out of ideas as to what I should post about. The natural thing would be for me to write about the 4th of July, but I barely took any pictures, and while I had a good time doing a little of this and a little of that here and there, it wouldn't make for very exciting posting (and please refrain from telling me that you don't find my usual posting to be very exciting anyway.) So I'm looking for suggestions as to potential content, either email me your notions or post them in the comments. I enjoyed writing my Steel Magnolias "review" that I think many of you enjoyed reading, so suggestions along the lines of "Tell us about the time you . . ." would be the most welcome.

Oh yeah, on the 4th of July, I saw the turkey that lives in Battery Park and I also saw Sarah Vowell down there. She's as short as I had expected, but skinnier than I had imagined.

And tonight I think I'm going to see Star Wars again. Because it's been a while.

Best Candidate for Most Embarrassing Post I'll Ever Write

When I was a freshman at BYU I wrote a few articles for the Student Review, BYU’s longest-standing, most-successful (but now totally defunct) independent student publication. After writing a few excessively praiseful reviews of Thee Martini concerts, I decided to expand my oeuvre and flex my humor-abilities by reviewing a Michael Mclean CD. For those of you who don’t know, or were trying to forget, Michael Mclean is a “popular” maker of inspirational LDS music. The cold-hearted would easily label his music as cheesey, sappy, or dumb – at least, that’s what I had decided it was as a freshman without having listened to it. After only hearing his name tossed about a bit I made up my mind that his was lousy stuff and set out to give his stuff a real thrashing. One afternoon I borrowed a CD of his from my roommate’s brother, put it into my stereo, got out a notepad, and sat back and began to listen, waiting for a vitriolic review to spring from my most cynical side. But as I sat alone in my dorm room and listened intently to the words of Michael Mclean (hoping that at any moment some line would strike me as especially ridiculous and inspire my ire) I found myself listening more and more closely to the words of the songs and felt a horrible, irresistible connection developing between myself and the lyrics. I put down my pen. I could speak no ill of Michael Mclean’s music that day. His sappy but simple messages of hope and gladness had touched a grouchy freshman’s heart.

Fast-forward to last Friday night. I’m sitting at home, short on activity ideas, thinking that I’d probably accept just about any offer that might come my way. And then I get a call from my friend Steve. Steve gets near-free tickets to plays and musicals all the time, once before I got to go see a new Woody Allen play with him and some folks thanks to these magic tickets. Anyway, Steve tells me he’s got 3 tickets he’s trying to get rid of to a new show on Broadway, and he was wondering if I was interested. And I think: “Cheap ticket to something? Sure I’m interested.” But then I ask, “What’s the show?” And Steve says, “Well, that’s the problem. You see, it’s . . . it’s . . . Steel Magnolias.”

I was being invited to go see the Broadway production of Steel Magnolias?

Quickly I asked myself: “Self, what do we know about Steel Magnolias?” All I could come up with was: Movie. I’ve never seen it. Julia Roberts. Women. The South. A pizza parlor? (Turns out I was thinking of Mystic Pizza, another early Julia Roberts film). Does it have anything to do with Fried Green Tomatoes? Women. For a moment I was a little weirded-out about the idea and pretty sure I was about to renege on my acceptance, but, drawing heavily on the fact that I had just been telling myself that I was willing to take up almost any offer that came along for the evening, I stuck with it and agreed to meet Steve at the theater.

On my way to the theater, I decided that, if anything, maybe Steel Magnolias would be dumb enough to inspire some scathing criticism that would make for good bloggin’ and in the time that passed between accepting Steve’s invite and heading for the theater I was told by a traveler about to depart for Scotland that (regarding the filmic version of the work) “Only a robot wouldn’t cry at Steel Magnolias.” So I thought that maybe I’d be winding up writing a funny (facetious) review about how I cried through the whole play or whatever. So, by the time the curtain went up, I was pretty psyched up to watch the play with a very critical eye, enjoy it in a very negative way, and then have at it later with (hopefully) humorous results.

And, well, wouldn’t you know that I pretty much really liked the play and would even probably see it again.

A coward would ditch his mean-review-gone-wrong right now, but I’ll stick around a little longer and try to say what I liked about the play without going too overboard. Because it’s not like I LOVED it. It’s not like I bawled my eyes out. But the Steel Magnolias, it was a little dagger, it stabbed at me a bit, and while I didn’t succumb to any twisting of the blade, I felt the most direct cuts a little. A little, I said. Actually, I don’t know what more to say about the show: it had six women, they were funny. They weren’t dumb. That pretty much took care of it. And while the big disaster of the play could be seen from a mile away, it was still kind of sad when it happened, and all the Magnolias had to pull through and hug each other. I suppose it helped that the actresses were all a little famous: Delta Burke (who I had seen in Thoroughly Modern Millie), Rebecca Gayheart, Cliff’s Mom from Cheers, and two other women who all got sufficient applause when they first came on stage, so they must have been famous to someone.

If I have any solid gripe with the play, it’s that never is the expression “steel magnolias” used in the dialogue. Magnolias the flower are mentioned very briefly in the first act, but barely even allegorically. I suppose I had hoped that in the final group hug of the final act one of the ladies would have said “Yes, we’ll make it, because you know what we are girls? A bunch of steel magnolias, that’s what we are, y’all.” But maybe such a line would have only satisfied the side of me that wanted to be making fun of Steel Magnolias, not, well, you know, having fun at Steel Magnolias.

I can’t believe I put this on the internet.

Oh, wait. Here's something that was bad about the play: there were two or three topical jokes that were slid into the play, and while I'm not saying I read the script and know that these were made up later, but the jokes were so awkwardly direct the actresses might as well have been winking at the audience as they told them. So take that, Steel Magnolias.

Again I Say, "Best Month Ever"

I know, I know. You love it when I show the graphs about the hits and visits.

I can't believe June is over. I barely remember it starting. Anyway, it looks like June had about 1,200 and Something hits, topping May by a hundred visits or so.



June was also the month with the most bizarre and inconsistent patterns of visits. And check out June 19, only 10 hits!



Sorry. But at least you only have to read these sorts of posts once a month.