adrian is rad

Last night’s playlist for your glancing.

Incidentally, if you’re on the radio or otherwise DJing at some point, do not try to follow Thom Yorke’s “Harrowdown Hill” with Jens Lekman’s “Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa.” The transition does not work and is quite jarring.

Two time co-host wicked child was back in town and he cohosted once more. It was a fun time. We are almost entirely non-sensical when we’re on the air.

(Andy, note that Band of Horses was formed out of the broken up bits of Carissa’s Weird.)

With my dad working for a coal company, I grew up around talk of mining coal veins and the like, but I was a little surprised to see this in an article about Centro-matic:

Centro-matic’s dynamic is intelligent, emotional American rock that mines some of the same veins as My Morning Jacket, Son Volt and the Drive-By Truckers.

How about that? Is that a common expression? Does your average San Jose (or other major city resident) know that coal (and other fossil remnants) is located in veins?

I always have moments like these because the linguistic hodge-podge that’s in my head: South African English, Pittsburghese, south-eastern PA dialect, geek slang. I know that 98% of what I say is understandable by the listener; it’s that last 2% that I’m never sure if it’s some specific or specialized term, phrase or way of talking that I’m not sure is in the common lexicon.

They should build a Buddhist amusement park in Tibet.

They’d call it Dalaiwood.

I finally was able to make a theme (wordpress 1.5) out of my old style (wordpress 1.2). So this is what the ol’ blog looked in ‘04. I don’t think all of the bugs are worked out, but it mostly works.

I don’t know if I’ll stick with this permanently, but otherwise this’ll be the “throwback theme” week here at adrianisrad.

[Update:] Yeah, comments are broken. I’m not sure what’s up…

[Update2:] Comments are fixed. Heroic!

I went to see the Red Sox play @ Oakland tonight.

Beckett pitched well, but the Papi-less, Manny-less offense just couldn’t score enough runs, losing 2-1.

Oakland moves to 7.5 ahead of the Angels in the AL West. Boston moves to 7.5 games behind the Yankees in the AL East. (The BoSox are 6.5 back in the wild card race.) Doesn’t look good for the Sox.

I don’t like Oakland when they’re playing the Sox, but I must admit, they’re growing on me otherwise.

I have a bunch of friends about to leave for Burning Man so I’ll leave them with…

Five things I’ll be doing while you’re at Burning Man:

1. carefully stewarding my pallor
2. repeatedly watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on the TiVo
3. defecating indoors—copiously, often, and without queueing
4. not tongue-kissing a sweaty Java programmer in clown makeup named “Shanti”
5. wearing clothes—lots and lots of square, capitalist, heinous-body-covering clothes

Tonight was the 826Valencia benefit show at the Palace of Fine Arts with Patton Oswalt, Zach Rogue, Mark Kozelek, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell, Jonathan Richman, and Aimee Mann.

The Palace of Fine Arts is a pretty big building. The auditorium area has very comfortable chairs in stadium-style seating and the walls are drapped in red velvet. (I’m getting that old that I’m really glad that this was a seated show.) The stage area is large and the visibility from pretty much anywhere seemed like it’d be good. The sound was excellent. That’s thanks to the sound guy, John Karr (seriously, that was his name). Thanks John!

Let’s go through the night:

Patton Oswalt: actor comedian guy. I recognized him. IMDB tells me it’s probably King of Queens (from the twoish times I’ve watched it). Turns out he’s very funny, in the offensive vein of humor, mostly.

Zach Rogue (Rogue Wave): I’ve seen him play solo before. He played a short set including “Publish my Love” and “Postage Stamp World”. He sounded great on the guitar and his vocals sounded really good too. He said a couple funny things and a few things about 826 and that was that.

Mark Kozelek: I feel pretty lucky I live in the same city (or metropolitan area) as Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters) and that I get to see him with some frequency. This guy is amazing. His voice is just so pure and incredible and his fingerpicked guitar playing is intensely good, though my concert companions wished “he’d just strum a chord sometime!” His set included “Trucker’s Atlas”, “Rock N Roll Singer”, and “Glenn Tipton”. I could listen to him singing about killing babies and he’s probably sound good. [I do no condone killing babies.]

Dave Eggers: He just showed a video about 826. It was fine. Then he showed some slides of the work of this kid named Alex who utilizes 826NYC. These were hilarious. He’s about 7 and does this collages of things like a peanut and a gingerbread man and then scrawls “A gingerbread man and a peanut got married. Can you imagine what their kids look like?” or a picture of a robot playing a trumpet and the scrawled writing says “Robots are the new jazz man. They are not good. If you want to go to a jazz restaurant, do not go, no matter how good the food is! DO NOT GO!” I’d buy a book of these if they made one.

Intermission: Hug Dave Eggers for $20, get a “buddy punch” from Sarah Vowell for $5 (or 5 for $20! bargain!). I did not partipate in these deals.

Sarah Vowell: She did a reading of a story she wrote about her favorite explorer, a German cartographer named Charles Preuss who she read about when she was on a book tour, reading a book about explorers. Patton Oswalt provided the voice of Preuss in thick German accent. He was quite funny about it. The story was entertaining and funny. I’m saying “story” but it was more like a report or something. There were many mentions of the Oregon Trail, but no mentions or jokes associated with The Oregon Trail. I was quite disappointed. You gotta pick the low hanging fruit!

Jonathan Richman: The last time I saw him was also a benefit show (and also with Mark Kozelek). He’s still as absolutely entertaining as always. He’ll move his hips to the music while playing Spanish-influenced guitar and singing in Italian while providing running translation in English or making off-handed comments. And then he’ll do an odd stage bow (or think of it as a figure skater at the end of a routine). I had a big smile on my face the whole time. I’m not overly familiar with his music but he closed with “Not So Much to be Loved as to Love.”

Aimee Mann: She was the only one to play with someone else, Paul Brion (any relation to Jon ?) He sang back ups, played bass (which was up way too much in the mix, only sound problem of the night), and guitar. I’m not incredibly familiar with her stuff, mostly just her Magnolia work and a handfull of other songs. She played a nice set, including “Save Me” and “You Could Make a Killing.”She’s got a great voice and the way her melodies work over her guitar is something else.

I’d heard reports of collaborations (Byrne/ Stevens and Gibbard/ Roderick) at other 826 benefits and so I had my hopes up for this one, but nothing materialized. Mann/ Richman? Mann/ Kozelek? Kozelek/ Richman? I wonder what any of those would have sounded like.

All in all a very good concert. What’s with benefit shows being great shows? I want my Small Stakes poster for this one, though. (I don’t think any were actually made.)

Yesterday I did the coast loop ride out to San Gregorio (stopping at the San Gregorio General Store for lunch) via Old la Honda and Tunitas Creek Road. The full map is here. I went with Dostal and a few of his friends, including a couple guys from the Campus Bike Shop. The total ride is about 45 miles and 4200 feet of climbing.

Thoughts on the ride:

• You shouldn’t rush up the first climb, Old la Honda. Pace yourself, unlike me. I went up 3.5% slower than my best time. Oops
• W. Old la Honda’s a fun descent
• 84 has a couple construction zones with severe bumped. I was sure I broke a spoke when I accidentally went over one of them. They are avoidable if you pay attention.
• Stage Rd. is sort of steep but fairly short
• The part down the PCH by Tunitas Beach is incredible. You’re going 40mph and it’s a gorgeous view.
• Tunitas Creek Rd. hurt a lot. It’s about 6.2 miles of climb. Shallow for 1 mile, then pretty steep for 2 (that’s the hurting part; and I didn’t realize I could go that slow on a bicycle without falling off) and then quite shallow for another 3.
• Having a bunch of professional bike mechanics on a ride with you is great when you get a flat 30-some miles into a ride. Thanks Parker!
• Then it’s a quick descent down King’s Mt, through Woodside and up Sand Hill. The bit up Sand Hill hurt because I was pretty fatigued.
• having a happy birthday balloon tied to your bike for 45 miles sort of sucks but people will wish you happy birthday when passing
• the Dutch Goose is a good of a place as any for post-ride drinks, burgers and chatting in there outside patio area

I went to see Talladega Nights with andyl at the Capitol Drive In the other night.

We had a hilarious mix up with the screens (”How come the sound doesn’t match up to the screen? [rolling down window] Excuse me, what movie is this?” “Barnyard” “Oh crap, we’re at the wrong screen”) After that we got to the right screen and everything was sorted out.

The movie was pretty funny. It was no Little Miss Sunshine, but I laughed a lot. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly were both good. This movie isn’t going to make you smarter or a better person, but it’s entertaining.

Fin.

Five albums that I own but somehow have failed to rip from CD:

1. Beach Boys Pet Sounds
2. Low Things we Lost in the Fire
3. Beulah The Coast is Never Clear
4. Mogwai Young Team
5. Pedro the Lion The Only Reason I Feel Secure

Other albums that I missed ripping:
Creedence Clearwater Revival Chronicle Vol. 1
Rachel’s the Sea and the Bells
Mark Eitzel The Invisible Man
Beatles Let it Be
Matt Pond PA Green Fury
Modest Mouse This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
Seam Headsparks

Last night’s playlist. it turned out alright.

(Andy, note the Kleenex Girl Wonder.)

(Note the appearance of the full length from Night Rally.)

Tide (with Febreze) is using the #22 great song of all time, Be My Baby, in one of their commercials. They start with the huge drums from the beginning at the beginning (as well they should) and then there’s an absolutely horrible cut to the first chorus.

The edit’s so bad it hit me like a train.

So not only does Ken Jennings have a blog (which is hilarious), but he likes the Mountain Goats and he writes about it. How cool is that!

I’m going to move mix tape 2 into a password protected folder in one day, so grab it now if you want it and haven’t gotten it yet.

If you missed it, email me (firstname @ firstnamelastname.com) and I can give you the password, location etc.

On Sunday, I bowled what was quite possibly the best bowl of as-of-yet short bowling career (at the PALBC of course). It will undoubtedly soon be called “the bowl”.

We were playing triples, so 3 per team, 3 bowls per person. I was playing vice with a very experienced bowler as my skip and a person of about my level playing playing lead. After the two leads had gone, they had 2-3 bowls clustered around the jack. My first two bowls were too wide (I “took too much grass”) and were short (”not enough weight”). Meanwhile, my opposing vice had added to the head, so there were now 4 shots closely clustered around the jack, probably within 1.5 feet of the jack with two very close in. (I’ve made an illustration below.) They were close enough that without something drastic happening, they would have ended the end with 4 points. .

It was my third and last bowl. Gordon, the skip, said “add some weight and bring it in a bit tighter” and pointed to the inside of the front left bowl indicating the path my bowl should take. I switched over to backhand and started my bowl.

Here’s what happened:

[click on the picture to get a full sized image]

Not only did I move the jack out of the head, but my bowl followed it another 8 or 10 feet out! Gordon and the other skip bowled their bowls and in the end we had 3 points instead of them having a sure 4 points. A swing of 7 points.

Order of business 1: I installed the custom query string plugin. It has enabled me to change something that has been bugging me for a while: when you go into a month archive, or a category, or submit a search, it’ll show you all things that fit that instead of just the first 10.

It’ll make older posts easier to find. I’m not sure if anyone but me actually tries to find old posts, but there it is.

Order of business 2: I’m more or less sick of this theme. I like bit on the left side and the dates but the top is bad and most of the text formatting is bad. I’m going to look for new Wordpress themes and see what I can find.

Order of business 3: I think I also need to update to Wordpress 2.0 on this bad boy.

So I made some decisions and made some donations. I checked all the charities out on charitynavigator.org beforehand to make sure my money was going to the right places.

Here’s the breakdown of charities and portions of total money that I gave:

• Local 1/4 Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco
• National 1/4 American Red Cross
• International 1/4 to African Medical and Research Foundation; 1/4 South African Development Fund

I don’t think any of these are perfect, but they all do good work. Thanks for the suggestions earlier. In the running for next time are Catholic Charities CYO, Archdiocese of San Francisco, Compassion International, and Worldvision.

note: Those of you who know me probably realize that I’m not writing about this because I want to draw attention to myself or anything like that. I’m not (or I hope I’m not). Perhaps you will see this and think about charities if you have the means.

note 2: It’s nearing my birthday and I’m thinking it might be a good tradition to give to charities every year around this time.

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

Currently two different network stations (the Fox-affliliate and the CBS-affiliate) are showing two entirely different versions (different shots, different commentators) of the SF Giants v Oakland Raiders game, in which two dreadful teams try not to embarrass themselves.

[Update:] Of course I mean the 49ers v Raiders. Also, they’re replaying the entire game on a third distinct station.

[Another Update:] Seriously, what’s the deal with this game? It’s being replayed on a fourth station.

I was thinking earlier today that I don’t give enough money to charity. So what are good charities?

I was thinking of splitting it 3 or 4 ways:

• Local. possibly Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County or Catholic Charities CYO of San Francisco
• National. Almost definitely Amerian Red Cross
• One or two international charities. At least one with a focus in (Southern) Africa. Possibly Zisize which a family friend works for

Any suggestions? Favorite charities? Who efficiently does good work helping people less fortunate?

If you haven’t heard this story, there were three fishermen from Mexico that were found 5000-some miles from their town after drifting at sea for 11 months. It’s pretty incredible.

on Woodside Rd in Woodside, CA.

This week’s playlist.

I used to post my playlists almost every week. Did people like that or not? Yay or nay?

“You rock!” may be an appropriate thing to yell between songs at an indie rock concert. Here are some things that may not be appropriate to yell:

1. “Not bad!”
2. “I am not bored!”
3. “I am undecided whether to buy your CD or not!”
4. “Your instruments seem to be in tune!”
5. “If you were on the radio I would not change the station!”
6. “You guys are OK!”

1 drink (sip) if:

• any member of the band says “thank you” or “thanks”
• the band asks you to applaude for the opening act
• the band illicits applause by mentioning the headlining act
• the band mentions the name of the town the concert is in
• each time you see someone wearing a winter hat inside
• each time you see someone wearing a hoodie or jacket inside
• the band says “this is a song about…” or something to that approximation

2 drinks if:

• a tall guy stands right in front of you
• the band is selling something hand-made at the merch table
• the band mentions drinking or buying alcohol
• the band responds to someone yelling from the audience
• the band ironically covers a mainstream song

3 drinks if:

• band asks for a place to sleep while on stage
• an audience member buys the band something to drink
• the band gets in an argument with a heckler
• the band seriously covers a mainstream song
• the band covers a song by another act on the bill

Am I missing any here?

It is mid-August 2006 and as such, it’s time for another online mix tape.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an mpu file)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2006august playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. This one has ditties by the Decemberists, David Bazan, the Long Winters, Danielson and many more!

Adrian’s August 2006 mix tape [zip file] [moved to password-protected folder]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last night at the Aquarius.

Let’s see, it’s a movie about a disfunctional family with parents that argue, a profanity-loving grandpa, a son that has taken a vow of silence, a suicide-attempting uncle and most importantly a beauty-pagent entering but somewhat plain daughter who all have to pile in a van together so that the daughter can enter the Little Miss Sunshine contest. It’s a roadtrip movie; it’s a family movie.

It’s also one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. I laughed out loud so much and so loud. It also manages to have it’s heartfelt and touching moments. The writing, directing and acting are all very good.

(And any movie that accompanies a road trip in a van with a Sufjan song about a road trip in a van gets my vote.)

I highly recommend this movie.

[Update:: I had a few more thoughts on this movie. It’s pretty amazing in its realness. Let me state this right: this movie has a contrived plot and is a farce, but within that the emotions and even many of the choices the characters make are real and true to those characters. Believablity within a farcicle shell.]

I rode my bike to the Golden Gate Park in the City today. It was a pretty good ride.

Here’s the route I took:
CaÑada road to 92.
92 briefly to Skyline
after the bridge over the San Mateo creek, I went onto the Sawyer Camp Trail
Sawyer Camp ends and pushes you under the 280. Left on the next road and then left under 280 at the first opportunity.
Back onto the trail until it ends, spitting you out on skyline/ 35.
35 [1] to the Great American Highway[2].
the Great American Highway takes you to the left (west) edge of Golden Gate Park.

[1] The part on 35 was the scariest. It’s a freeway for a short period with a medium-sized shoulder and a speed limit of 50 so lots of fast moving cars. This also has the steepest sections of the ride.
[2] There’s a path on the side of the Great American Highway that I’d recommennd. The road’s rough there.

It totaled 37.44 miles according to my bike computer.

• 15 mile ride (800ft elevation)
• 1/2 mile swim
• 20 mile ride (2000ft. elevation)
• 38 mile ride (?/ ~ 2000ft. evelation)

If you haven’t seen them there are some funny or awesome videos floating around.

The band Ok Go managed to make one of the most entertaining videos (QT WMV) I’ve seen recently simply with a few rented treadmills and a borrowed video camera. That is some serious choreography. They also choreographed a back yard dance routine for one of their other videos (QT WMV). It’s not quite as entertaining, but it’s still fun.

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager has a title that speaks for itself.

The “Chinese Backstreet Boys” are a couple Chinese college students who record video of themselves while animatedly singing along to Backstreet Boys songs. I Want It That Way is pretty great while As Long As You Love Me is more for completists.

Nikon announced the D80 earlier this week. It looks pretty good. One of my Nikon bodies (the N8008s) quit stopping down the aperature on the lens a couple weeks ago, so it’s darn near unusable at this point (and I’d spend more money repairing it as I spent on the camera to begin with) and I’m thinking of moving to a Nikon digital fairly soon.

I’ve also just about never heard a bad thing from a D200 owner so that is in the running as well.

Both of them are serious $$$, especially after already purchasing a Macbook and various trips I’ve taken this year.

Just a teaser here: Online Mixtape vol. 2 (August 2006) is coming up on Sunday night or Monday sometime. I’m in the test-listen stage. There’s one rough spot I want to iron out still, but it’s mostly ready. Then the liner notes and playlist (iTunes, mpu) files.

note: as far as I can tell the East River isn’t a river.

just letting you know.

oh, it’s not really the Hudson river by manhattan either.

perhaps you should rally to change the maps.

Normally I drink diet dr. pepper. It’s borderline good. It’s not regular dr. pepper but it’s pretty good still.

I tried coke zero last week. It’s drinkable. It’s better than diet coke with splenda.

Yesterday I bought a bottle of diet berry and cream dr. pepper because they were out of diet dr. pepper. It’s just weird. I’d recommend against it.

[note 1: I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a memoir of my time at MIT. I’m going to start posting some stories here as sort of a test bed. I don’t have a writing voice, much like I don’t have a singing voice, but I hope to find one.]

[note 2: What follows is, admittedly, a bit creepy, but it is not stalking nor was it ill-received by the parties involved.]

It was the Fall of 2001 and I was freshly a junior. A number of my friends had left MIT to live in and go to the other Cambridge across the pond. September 11 obviously hung heavily over that semester. I was taking a class in world music with the incredible George Ruckert along with the normal engineering classes and an incredibly hard German class (”Read this scene and memorize this speach from Faust by Thursday…”) with a woman named Dagmar which I eventually dropped after a month of struggle. I was living in 52 with Jesse which has a whole host of separate stories associated with it, but for now I’ll recount the story of the Lia Incident.
(more…)

So I saw George Lucas before, but this really takes the cake for celebrity sightings.

I was just finishing up my Wednesday night bowls at the Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club and who walks in but Steve Jobs. He sat and talked with another guy while watching the bowl for about 25 minutes and then got up and left. He pretty much kept to himself but talked to a couple members when they approached him.

The crappiest picture ever of him leaving (he’s the one in black):

I like this hat ($12, street vendor, the Strip District). I like this shirt ($0.99, Mission Thrift Store, the Mission).

I’ve been posting a lot of pictures of me recently. I’ll get back to substantive posts eventually. Maybe.

Here are some tickets I’ve purchased or obtained for the upcoming period of time:

• 8/13 Black Heart Procession Great American [kzsu free tix]
• 8/19-8/20 James Brown, the Donnas at the Fogg fest [kzsu free tix]
• 8/28 Book Eaters 826 benefit with Amiee Mann, Jonathan Richman, Mark Kozelek, Zach Rogue, Dave Eggers, Sarah Vowell.
• 10/11 Sufjan Stevens @ Zellerbach

Concerts I might get tickets for or go to:

• 8/12 Elvis Perkins at Great American
• 8/22 the Mountain Goats at Amoeba
• 9/5 Eric Bachman at Cafe du Nord
• 9/6 Centro-matic at the Bottom of the Hill
• 9/13 Laura Veirs and Karl Blau at Cafe du Nord
• 9/22 Andrew Bird at Great American
• 10/16 Badly Drawn Boy at Great American
• 10/17 The Hold Steady at Great American
• 10/20 Beirut at Great American
• 10/30 or 10/31 Bonnie Prince Billy at Great American

Part of Jeff’s bachelor party was going to the Pirates game on Thursday. It was a close game and a good one, with the Pirates winning in the end.

Here’s a a good recap of the game.

Also PNC Park is awesome. They even have Primanti’s and a pierogi race. It’d be a truly sad moment if the team moved.

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

I ate some food in NYC.

Grimaldi’s Pizza on Old Fulton* in Brooklyn. This is some seriously good pizza. Not-too-greasy and thin crusted, it tastes like it was made with care. Recommended.

Hallo Berlin on 10 Ave. Great German restaurant. Good food (brats, other sausage, potato pancakes) and good German beers (Kostritzer!). The only damper was they were out of Spätzle (which, I’d like to remind everyone, is from Schwaben). Highly recommended.

Katz’s deli on Houston**. The giant pastrami sandwhich is giant and delicious (if a bit overpriced). It’s the best pastrami sandwhich I’ve had. So succulent and juicy.

Nathan’s and funnel cake at Rye Playland. Nathans? I’m unimpressed. Funnel cake, on the other hand, is just about the best food ever invented. My hat off to the Pennsylvania Germans.

*Funny story: I went to Grimaldi’s on Old Fulton and then walked back to the subway station with Paul, my coworker. Right outside the subway station, a girl approaches us and asks me if I know where Old Fulton Rd. is. Well, there are about 1 million streets in NYC and I get asked about the only one I know! I felt pretty great! I told her “down here and then take a left at the bottom.”

**It was Sam Hyuston, wasn’t it? Then why is it Howston St.? New Yorkers, you need to get this straight.

I was a bit of a tourist in NYC.

Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Empire State Building require standing in security lines. The Brooklyn Bridge is monitored. This is a different age we live in.

The Bridge was pretty cool to walk across. I like that the walkway is suspended and in the middle of the bridge. It’s a cool thing to do, to walk across it. The east to west direction perhaps has better views, probably.

The Met is cool pretty much only in that it has a collection of baseball cards and it has Washington Crossing the Delaware (which is oft imitated by me).

The Guggenheim seems to be cool but I was unimpressed by Zaha Hadid’s work, which is the main exhibit currently.

The Cooper-Hewitt is the national design museum. It had paintings (about travel and tourism). Paintings are not design. Graphic design is design. Product design is design. Paintings are not design. I think I need to write a letter.

The Moma was cool. I liked the third floor (I guess) a lot: architecture, design and photography. The design section had what was supposed to be in the Cooper-Hewitt: lots of neat product design. The photography exhibit was great too.

Claude Debussey?

Isn’t that some relation to Jerome Bettis?

harharharharharharharharharharh

Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I’d like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

Man, who invented open cell polyurethane foam? All the best souvenirs are made of it.

For instance: I got a foam Statue of Liberty crown after I went there on Monday:

And I got a sweet foam finger at the Pirates game the other day:

These are all the souvenirs I got for a three city east coast tour:

I apparently flew across the country to sit in the same heat wave that I hated in California a week and a half ago.