Black Red Yellow

MoMA

2006-04-03T18:26:00.000-04:00

K1's friend Merv is in town this week for a moot court competition. He came to the city a few days early so he could hang out. He's currently staying with S1 out in Brooklyn.

Today, J1 and I met them for brunch/lunch at Clinton Street. The food, as usual, was excellent. Also as usual, I ate far more food than I needed. But....it was so damn yummy. What's a foodie supposed to do?

Rio and Merv after lunch:

And me, J1, and S1 too:

After lunch, we wandered around the LES, stopping at Guss' Pickles.

Merv ready to open the container of pickled okra he just purchased.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Merv dropped the lid on the extremely dirty sidewalk, inside down. Consequently, we had to make a trip back to Guss' to get a new lid.

Then, J1 went to work and S1, Merv and I headed up to the MoMA. I love the MoMA. It is such an open, comforting space. I took a few pictures, mostly of incredibly phallic artwork.

I love this chair.

New Adventures in Tooldom

2006-03-28T23:41:00.000-05:00

Some people are just an endless source of amusement in and of themselves. This is because they're crazy. Just to be clear, this is a case of "laughing at them, not with them."

So today S2 is walking down the hall, when a well-known weirdo comes up to him. Well, screw it. I'll just let S2 tell you in his own words.

"[Insert name here] is so crazy dude. I just saw him in the hallway on my way to class. No 'hello', no 'how are you?', nothing like that. Just (as I'm quickly walking by in a clear rush):

"'Have you filled out your bar application yet? You know it's online right? It just got posted so I just did it in class. What are you waiting for? Aren't you going to do it? It's definitely online right now.'

"I am not even kidding you."

I really feel that nothing I say can add to this.

Thoughts in flight

2006-03-28T23:20:00.000-05:00

J1 and I came back from Cali yesterday. We had a good time, but more on that later. What I must talk about right now are the number of annoying people who I encountered on the airplane, and how they are a drain on society.

The tattle-tail: We were sitting at the gate in Burbank, waiting for pre-flight preparations to finish. People were listening to iPods, reading, sleeping, and talking on their cell phones. As the flight attendant walked past, the woman behind us stopped him.

"Excuse me, sir," she said. "You need to make an announcement to tell people to stop talking on their phones. It's time to turn them off."

"Well, we will make that announcement when it's time, ma'am," he replied.

Come on. Did you also have to raise your hand and tell the teacher when people were passing notes in class? Do you call the police station and tell them that someone passed you on the freeway when you were going the speed limit, so obviously the must have been speeding?

Get a grip, and stop trying to tell other people how to live their lives and how to do their jobs.

The Sprawler: The guy sitting next to me was a sprawler. Listen...an airplane is like the back seat of a car when you were eight years old and taking a trip across the country with your siblings. Ok, so when you were eight years old and taking trips across the country, you were in an airplane, you say? Fine. How nice for you to have been rich. We drove, and I was crammed into the back seat of a Ford Escort with my two siblings. No, I'm not the least bit bitter.

Anyway, back to my point. Being on an airplane is like being in the back seat of the car with your siblings. There are clear demarcations of space, and only someone who is completely rude would ignore these boundaries.

Memo to the dude next to me: Your knee/thigh should not be in the area of my seat. I should not have to lean to the side to avoid a romantic shoulder tango with you. And I certainly should not have to reach under your arm to change my TV channels.

Seriously, on JetBlue, the space divisions are so obvious. The armrest with my TV controls are my space. Your space starts immediately past the edge of my armrest and extends to the far edge of your armrest. Monkeys could figure this out.

The Encroachers: This is similar to the previous category, but it is a more general problem. I am talking about people who instead of taking their neighbor's space instead take space from everyone on the plane. Ah yes....I speak of the dreaded "aisle creep."

Once again, we are talking about simple logic here. The aisle is not part of your seat. Just because you are sitting next to the aisle does not give you the right to put your leg, arm, elbow, or shoulder into the space of the aisle. And if you do, and if someone happens to bump your arm, do not give that person a nasty look as if it is their fault that you were hit.

Listen, I had nothing to do with placing your body parts in the way of everyone else. I'm not going to hit you on purpose, but I'm also not going to spend seven minutes inching down the aisle to ensure that I miss all the protruding body parts. It's like parking someone into a parallel parking space and then being angry when you come back to a scraped bumper.

California Dreaming

2006-03-20T20:36:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, J1 and I leave for California. I have to say I'm pretty damn excited about it. The weather in NYC has turned cold over the last few days (it is still winter, after all). Southern California, on the other hand, is basking in sunshine and temperatures in the 70s.

In addition, I'm certainly ready to have some time away from New York. Even though last week was spring break, I really just want some time to relax and kick it. California seems like an ideal place for that.

While we're there, we should be able to see the dearly departed K1 and Jammie. Plus, there is apparently a trip to DisneyLand in the works for Thursday. I'm going to let you guess who is more excited about this -- me or J1.

Besides, as the ultimate reason for a trip to California, it gives me the chance to skip class (although due to my schedule, I'll only be missing two classes).

Pistons vs. Knicks

2006-03-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I finally got my long-awaited Valentine's Day gift when J1 and I went to the Garden to see the Pistons take on the Knicks. I was very excited, because I haven't had the chance to see Detroit play in almost three years (since the 2003 playoffs).

We had very nice tickets in the third tier across from the Knicks' bench. Since it was St. Patrick's Day, the Knicks were wearing their special green St. Paddy's unis, which meant that the Pistons got to wear their crisp home whites.

We had lots of fun at the game, although I was rather disappointed by the outcome. After Rasheed Wallace and Rip Hamilton got ejected in the third quarter, the Knicks managed to squeak out a 105-103 win. I really would have liked to see Detroit win, but at least I go to see them play.

The Pistons huddle up during a time-out in the second quarter

Eddy Curry attempts a free throw in the fourth

Parting NCAA Shots

2006-03-19T12:59:00.000-05:00

Hey Greensboro Coliseum! The mid 90s called. They want their color scheme back.

Seriously, this color scheme looks so dated.

Is Crean Overrated?

2006-03-16T17:42:00.000-05:00

I always kind of made the assumption that Marquette coach Tom Crean was a good tournament coach. He comes from the Tom Izzo tree, has a Final Four on his resume, and a 4-2 overall record in the NCAAs.

But on further inspection, here's what you find: With Dwayne Wade, he's 4-1 and made the Final Four. Without him, he's 0-1, about to become 0-2 (with Marquette trailing Alabama), and has only two other NCAA tournament apperances.

So maybe Crean was lucky to have one of the most incredible basketball players of the last decade on his squad, rather than having great coaching abilities.

Another missed chance

2006-03-16T16:56:00.000-05:00

Winthrop fell short in their bid to upset Tennessee. Tennessee hit a turn-around from the corner (foot on the 3-point line) with 0.4 seconds left to win 63-61. It was an absolutely fantastic game -- close all the way, with both teams playing well throughout (although Winthrop went through a bad shooting slump in the second half that probably cost them the game). I'm still waiting for a real upset. While Montana looks like it will take down Nevada, I don't think a 12 beating a five qualifies as a real upset, since it happens at least once a year.

Pacific Falls Short

2006-03-16T16:24:00.000-05:00

The 13th-seeded Pacific Tigers fell just short in their effort to knock off 4-seed Boston College. BC is a perennially overrated team that generally folds under pressure in the tournament.

The game was a double-overtime thriller, and was much closer than the eventual 88-76 score indicated. Unfortunately, Pacific didn't execute down the stretch at the end of the first overtime. If they had (they had a six-point lead with two minutes to go), they should have won.

Instead, we'll have to wait for someone else to pull off the first epic upset of the tournament. With Withrop hanging with Tennessee, maybe it will happen soon.

Wow....

2006-03-16T15:57:00.000-05:00

Alabama needs to get rid of these uniforms. Talk about awkward and ugly.

As if the Devil weren't annoying enough....

2006-03-16T14:12:00.000-05:00

Duke's men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is the devil. Not only does he coach the Blue Devils, but he has a devilish gleam in his eye. Besides, you have to be the evil one to pretend to be the most classy guy in the world while getting massive amounts of fawning press and then scream obscenities at refs for the entire game. The guy is basically the second coming of Bob Knight -- a talented coach who is also a complete asshole. But because the media loves Coach K (the man needs a toilet paper endorsement contract to wipe all the media slobber off his ass), we never hear about his tirades.

And this is a guy who has his own website (I refuse to link to it) which has the headings "Teacher, Father, Leader, Motivator, Student, Coach, Friend, Mentor." It has an upcoming feature where you can share your Coach K story -- How has Coach K affected your life?

Clearly, this guy is not lacking ego.

Anyway, Mr. Devil got even more irritating last year when he got an American Express endorsement deal. He's a coach, yet we have to see him in nationally televised spots (basically he's getting free recruiting face-time) talking about how wonderful he is.

But even worse, he now is also doing commercials for Chevy. They are some of the worst commercials on television right now -- the copy is terrible and it doesn't even make sense. It's basically like Chevy is saying, "We have Coach K in our commercials. Therefore, you will want to buy our cars." It's a completely illogical assumption.

A Small Bracket Tip

2006-03-15T12:43:00.000-05:00

Well, the best time of year is upon us, with March Madness ready to tip off in fewer than 24 hours. If you haven't yet filled out your brackets, here's some statistical data that could give a small edge.

The tie-breaker in most pools is the the person who most closely predicted the combined score of the championship game. While ties are relatively unlikely in a small pool, it's still worth thinking about likely combined scores so that you can make as good of a prediction as possible.

I looked at the combined scores from the last 21 NCAA championship games (1985-2005). Scores ranged from an outlier-low 116 (2002) to 176 (1990).

The mean for the period was 149; the median was 148.

However, two things bothered me about that data. First, it covers a broad period during which the NCAA game has undergone many changes. Second, that ugly 2002 game between Maryland and Indiana is a completely statistical anomaly.

Narrowing the data to games played in the era when early draft entry changed the complexion of the college game (1997-2005), and throwing out the 2002 game, we get eight games with a score range from 145-165. Not surprisingly, the average is just under 155.

This seems like a good figure, but testing it against the data (in other words, how far off were you each year) shows that you get a high level of variance. Consequently, I think it needs to be adjusted down slightly.

In the end, 151 seems like a good number to me. It's fairly close to many of the games played in the mid- to high-140s, but isn't too far below the games in the upper 150s.

So I'll be putting 151 for my combined score in any pools I enter. If you want to use this number, feel free, unless you're betting against me.

More Big East Tourney Action

2006-03-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

So as if my foray into Madison Square Garden for the opening round of the Big East Tournament wasn't enough, I managed to get another night of basketball for the quarter-final games last Thursday. The added bonus was that a.) the tickets were free and b.) they were in a skybox.

How did I get these tickets, you ask? Well, it's a good question. I'm still not sure I know the answer. Basically, A1 got them through work. It was one of those "friend of a friend who had a vendor who gave them to him" sort of things. Through a process of attrition, A1 and I ended up with them. (We went down to MSG with four guys, but there ended up only being two tickets for us. Two of the guys weren't that into seeing the games anyway so they just headed to a bar, and generously let A1 and I take the tickets.)

Anyway, the games were fun, although nothing matched the drama of the Syracuse last-second win in the first round. But that game is going to be an absolute classic. And frankly, despite the nice padded seats of the skybox, and the unlimited food (with nary a vegetarian option in sight), I think the view from the "cheap seats" is actually better. But that's ok. It was a damn good time, and it was free. That's a good combination in my opinion.

Villanova runs a play on Rutgers in the first half.

During a time-out, the Rutgers Dance Team performs.

A1 and I chilling in style.

Typo of the Day

2006-03-12T12:45:00.000-05:00

From a user-generated restaurant review at MenuPages:

"Their food tastes almost as good as my mom."

I'm not sure you want to be sharing that information with the rest of the world.

Photo of the Day

2006-03-11T23:51:00.000-05:00

The facade of the Met has finally been completely restored, and was unveiled a couple weeks ago. Saturday was a beautiful day, so after some yummy Indian food for lunch, we wandered by to see the front of the museum.

A detail from the crown of the building.

The lovelies, J1 and S1, pose in the sunshine.

Senseless Lawsuit

2006-03-09T14:54:00.000-05:00

The National Center for Men, a men's-rights advocacy group (because men are generally so disadvantaged in our society [for the humor-challenged, please note that this is sarcasm]), is filing suit in Michigan to stop mandatory child support payments for children which father's "did not want." They contend that because women have "reproductive freedom of choice," men should also have the choice of whether or not they want to support the children.

This is probably the most mindless lawsuit that I've heard about in recent time.

First, there is the practical element. Someone has to support children, and it makes the most sense to have the parents do this, rather than putting the onus on taxpayers to pony up.

Second, there is a severe issue of enforceability. No man is going to say that he "wanted" children if it means he will have to pay hundreds of dollars a month in child support. It would be absolutely impossible to determine who actually did not want children and who is simply trying to avoid paying child support.

Third, and this goes to the core of lawsuit, men DO have a choice when it comes to reproduction. They can wear a condom. They can have themselves clipped. They can abstain from intercourse. They have a whole range of options to choose from if they want to avoid having children. If they are so worried about the potential cost of supporting children, they should pursue one of these options.

Finally, this would set up a terrible system of manipulation in relationships, where men could attempt to force women to have abortions or give up their babies for adoption by threatening to say that they did not want the child and will not pay child support.

I'm sure there are cases where women "trick" men into having children the men do not want. But this strikes me as a much smaller problem than deadbeat parents who do not pay to support the children they brought into the world.

A pain in my butt

2006-03-09T14:15:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, my tailbone hurts like hell today. Actually, I think the reason is that I spent four hours slouching in hard plastic seats yesteday at MSG. Anyway, whatever the cause, my ass is in pain. Sitting, walking, or laying down (I couldn't sleep on my back last night) all hurt.

About the only thing I can do is stand up, but obviously that doesn't work in class, or in many other contexts. So instead I sit, leaning forward to put as little pressure on my tail as possible.

So that's my excitement for the day.

And you wonder how it got its name...

2006-03-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

Great news for Nina the model. Showing her surprising versatility, she discovered she could do shoots for both Yahoo!Personals and Yahoo!HotJobs.

Seriously, does that picture have ANYTHING to do with looking for jobs. I guess there is the reason it's called HotJobs.

Big East Tourney

2006-03-08T23:43:00.000-05:00

S2 and I headed down to Madison Square Garden today to catch the opening round of the Big East Tournament.

It was so fun, and I must say, it proves why being a third year is so sweet. It's the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, and we're just sitting at the Garden, chilling, and watching great basketball.

We saw Cincinnati vs. Syracuse and Georgetown vs. Notre Dame. The Syracuse game was amazing, and was won by Gerry MacNamera with a three-pointer with 0.5 seconds left. MSG was going crazy. The second game wasn't near as good (both Georgetown and Notre Dame went through long cold stretches), but it had a pretty good ending as well.

It was also great because we managed to scalp decent tix (300 section, between halfcourt and the baseline) for $20 each.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera, so I don't have any photos of all the fun.

My Small Wednesday Complaints

2006-03-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

People who don't read the content of emails

So I've been in conversations with this dude who wants me to organize some people to do a musical thing in a couple weeks. It should be fairly simple and fairly straightforward. Of course, it's becoming clear that this guy isn't the type to do "clear and straightforward."

First, I gave him my email address and phone number. Then he called me because apparently my writing was so sloppy that he thought a "u" was a "z". Now I didn't think my writing was that bad, not to mention that the "z" was a completely illogical character to put there. Anyway, he called me and we got that straightened out.

So he emailed me to say, "Is this getting through?" I emailed back and said, "Yup, looks like we're in contact." Then I hear no further details from him for this gig I was supposed to be organizing. As time is wasting away, and I need to start rounding up people, I emailed him again today to just say "Send me more details when you get a chance."

Tonight, I got an email back that said "Yup, it does look like we're in contact now."

So rather than answering my email from today, which was actually the relevant email, he replied to my pointless email from three days ago. Great!

Sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name
I'm a little irritated with someone in the law school, but I don't really feel like airing out my petty rants here, where it could easily get passed along to the person I want to rant about.

Sometimes, I wish I were completely unknown here, so I could say anything. The downside to that, of course, is that then I would have virtually no readers.

Working for our food

2006-03-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

Saturday night, a bunch of us got together at J2E's to hang out and cook some dinner. We ended up making a bunch of great food: beet risotto, baked acorn squash, veggies, bruchetta, etc.

The fresh ingredients are ready to be chopped up:

Everyone is hard at work, preparing food. Well, not me. I'm taking the picture. But only because J2 removed me from beet-chopping duty because we needed to get the beets cut up, and at the rate I was going, the risotto still wouldn't be cooked.

Bryan whipping up some REALLY good broccoli and mushrooms:

The food is finally ready. Yum!

Me and my baby riding the subway home:

Cue up the DVR

2006-03-06T16:26:00.000-05:00

So as I mentioned previously, my VCR decided to stop working last week. After some research about my options, I decided to pony up and start paying Time Warner Cable for DVR service.

I considered getting a generic DVR or even a TiVo or ReplayTV without a subscription and using it like a VCR, except with a hard drive instead of VHS tapes. However, this seemed like a sub-optimal solution because I wouldn't have access to program guides and would have to rely on some hacks to make it do the stuff I wanted it to. In addition, DVRs not from your cable company do not have dual tuners, which prevents recording two channels at once, or watching one channel while another is recording.

Also, I have a feeling I will be upgrading to HDTV sooner or later, at which point a standard DVR would become somewhat obsolete. Although you can use a standard DVR to record HD, it records the signal at standard resolution (and outputs it at standard resolution as well). This means that you have to put the DVR on its own video loop to keep it from degrading all your viewing. So I would in essence end up with another piece of obsolete equipment. On the other hand, TWC will give me a DVR-HD for the same price as the standard DVR.

So anyway, I'm currently waiting at TWC's "service center" in the Flatiron District so I can pick up my new box. While it's somewhat annoying -- the wait is projected at 35 minutes -- it's really a rather nice setup they have here. They have multiple televisions you can watch (and tune yourself), digital phones you can use to call anywhere in the country for free, and computer terminals where you can surf the internet.

So I'm using a rather nice Dell 17-inch plasma screen monitor and posting away to my heart's content. I must say, I've had much worse experiences waiting in line. This certainly beats the hell out of the New York DMV.

Oscars

2006-03-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

Tonight was the Academy Awards, which as usual went on for far longer than they needed to.

It was around 11:00 pm, and there were still about six awards to give out, and these were the big ones. I told J1, "This is going to take at least another hour or hour and a half." She said, "It will be done in thirty minutes."

Being the experienced Oscar-watcher that she is, she was right. But I have to say it makes no sense to me. It's like they suddenly realize "Holy Crap! We've been here for three hours. Let's get this show over with so we can start the after-parties already!" If they kept up that pace for the whole show, we'd be done in like 90 minutes and everyone would be happy.

It is a mystery to me why it takes far more time to give out awards for Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing than for Director, Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, and Best Actress. If anything, it seems like more time should be devoted to the latter categories. But what do I know.

Jon Stewart was great as the host. He's funny and makes good jokes on the fly.

The main reason I found the show palatable was because this year I entered an Oscar pool. As has been proven convincingly by the NCAA tournament, if you bet on something, it becomes much more interesting. I would say betting is about the only way to make people care about who wins Best Animated Short, just like it's the only way to make them care who wins a first-round game between Coppin State and Texas Tech.

My picks were ok, but not great. If Crash hadn't upset Brokeback for best picture, I would have been pretty satisfied with my results (I still don't know how I scored compared to others in the pool). Out of 62 possible points, I got 47. I picked 19 out of 25 categories correctly.

Three of my misses were in the "nobody has any freaking clue" category (Documentary Short, Animated Short, Live Action Short), which is fine (they were only worth one point each). But then I missed on Original Song and Cinematography (each worth three) and Best Picture (worth five).

I can hardly imagine that my score will put me anywhere near first or second place in the pool, which means I'm out of the money. But it was only a $3 investment to make the night a little more interesting, so that's fine.

[Edit] For far mor entertaining Oscars analysis, check out The Sports Guy on ESPN.com. Best line:
Part of me still thinks Jack Nicholson saw "Brokeback Mountain" on the winner card, took a deep breath, said to himself, "Screw it, I hated that movie," called an audible and said, "And the Oscar goes to ... Crash!"

Chinatown Scenes

2006-03-05T23:47:00.000-05:00

J1 and I have been exploring Chinatown a little more thoroughly the past couple weeks. She's teaching piano lessons on Sunday mornings at a school in Chinatown, so after she finishes, I come down and meet her; we get lunch, wander around, and enjoy the city.

There are, I am sure, many great things about Chinatown, but the one that is most prominant in my mind is that you can get large quantities of REALLY good food for pennies on the dollar.

Today, we visited Congee, known for serving great rice porridge, or jook. I had eaten jook once before and was fairly unimpressed -- it didn't have enough flavor for me.

Today, I ordered Congee's "Healthy Vegetarian Porridge." It came with carrots, mushrooms, pea pods, green onions, and other random veggies that I couldn't identify. At first, it was only ok, until I added a nice dose of red chillis.

Now those of you who know about my love affair with all things spicy may just think that I started enjoying the jook because it was an effective medium from which to eat red chilli sauce. Not so. In this case, the chillis really brought out the more subtle flavors in the jook, making a nice complement to the vegetables.

Oh, and did I mention that in addition to being tasty, the food was cheap? J1 and I each got soup, along with spring rolls and steamed dough. Total: $11.75. I love cheap food!

On the way to Congee (it's on the Bowery, just below Grand), the colors of Chinatown with the backdrop of the Empire State Building:

(It's kind of a crappy picture. I was trying to keep a van parked along the street out of the picture and ended up with the camera slightly askew.)

I'd like to say that this is a picture of New York's Bravests (as the Post and News like to call the NYFD) rushing off to fight a fire. However, the reality is slightly more mundane. Despite the presence of eight fire trucks, nothing seemed to be going on and everyone was getting ready to head back to the firehouse.

The New York Police Building, which is now apartments (renting for $7k-$10k per month).

My favorite day of the year

2006-03-03T23:41:00.000-05:00

Today was my favorite day of the year. Well, maybe not my absolute favorite, but definitely in the top five.

What was the occasion?

The Pearl Jam Ten Club Christmas single arrived in my mailbox.

Those of you who are stickler for dates and times may point out that Christmas occurred two months ago. You would, of course, be correct. You would also be what is referred to in Spanish as an aguafiesta (this is one of three things I remember from high school Spanish thirteen years ago).

The Christmas Single, PJ's gift to their loyal fans (loyalty is, unsurprisingly, defined by the willingness to pay $15 annually to have a first shot concert tickets, get the Christmas Single, and receive the band's newsletter), always arrives in February or March. Really, it's better that way. Christmas has enough associated excitement, hype, and fun. No sense in concentrating it all in one week out of the year. This way, in the doldrums of winter, one gets a little surprise in the mailbox.

Of course, the first thing I did when got into my apartment was to drop the 45 on the trusty turntable and crank it up. Not the greatest Christmas Single ever (pretty mellow and low-key), but the a-side does feature Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin fame, for those of you not engaged with classic rock) doing guest vocals at a Hurricane Katrina benefit show.

Good times, and a nice surprise for this afternoon.