June 2005 Archives

welcome back som. i was wondering whether they would return to their uninspiring crap architectural ways. i was initially a bit worried, after seeing the original redesign of the freedom tower back in 2003 and actually thinking that it looked nice. slender, elegant, and incorporating green architecture with its wind farms, the older design actually surprised me (in a good way). but after seeing the new freedom tower design, i dont have to worry anymore about som losing their ways. the uninspired and horribly pedantic design evokes classic som in ways the older design could only dream of. redesigned because of security concerns, the new design is symmetrical, blocky, boorish, and rests on a big slab of security paranoia. the giant centered antenna, which brings the towers height to the gloriously symbolic 1776 ft, is like the crown that sits atop a monument to mediocrity. hooray for architecture in america!

> new freedom tower sucks (via ny times)
> original freedom tower (2003)

ok, first...before i forget to mention it, the new trailer for peter jacksons king kong is out. woo nelly, it looks pretty coo. and jack black in the lead...should be interesting.

HANA AND ALICE
last nite was the second outing to the new york asian film festival, this time for shunji iwai's hana and alice. i hadnt heard of the movie before, but iwais other movie all about lily chou chou was pretty coo, so i fig'd hana and alice would be as good. the storys pretty simple...about 2 best friends (one "cute", the other "quirky") as they start high school and pine over the same guy. except that hana (the quirky one) convinces the guy he has amnesia after he bangs his head and tells him that theyre going out, all while alice (the cute one) plays along and pretends to be his ex. hmm, boring summary. ok lets see, the movies pretty damn coo and smirkingly funny. there, summarized. it doesnt hurt that the movies gorgeously shot, and alice (yu aoi), the "cute one"...is really cute. i found it funny that while the "good-looking" halves of best friend duos are usually supposed to be haughty or shallow, alice is modest, funny, and actually pretty nice. that doesnt leave much for hana. poor hana.

FRIDAY
was supposed to be vietnamese lunch in chinatown. but after figuring out that parking sucked massiveness, this was revised to congee village, where we ate ourselves stupid. yes...word.

SATURDAY
chilled with marisol, strolling around e.village looking for that elusive "kick-ass t-shirt". it never materialized after hitting numerous stores...er. i did however get to see m's new apartment and its rockin' sunken rear courtyard. prime bbq space...woo. we also got smoothies from jennys cafe and an early din at yokochos with alice before checking out the new giant robot store opening. i'll probably check out the t's later this week.

SUNDAY
met up with fishy for our first new york asian film festival movie of 2005...masaaki yuasa's mindgame, a fucked-up stream-of-consciousness animated life adventure of epic proportions. i wasnt familiar with many of the movies in this years lineup, but im pretty glad i chose mindgame. its hard to describe mindgame short of sounding like a tripped-up acid junkie...but it centers around nishi, his ex-gf myuon, her sis, the yakuza, an old hermit, and a really big whale. by the "end" of the movie (it never really ends), nishi would have died, gone to heaven, escaped a shape-shifting god, willed himself back alive with a newfound sense of life, gone back in time, saved myuon, escaped the yakuza, get swallowed by a giant whale, and find life and happiness living inside the mouth of the whale, all the while hearing, seeing, and living the past and possible futures of those around him. its nothing short of wtf, but brilliant nonetheless. the nyaff is still happening...so check it out while you still can.

ive been pretty spoiled when it comes to lunch this past week. we had a meeting in manhattan on tuesday, so we had lunch at casa mono on irving afterwards. mario batalis tapas bar...mmm. i dont think ive ever had such swishy and yum fried calamari before...and i def wouldnt have minded if the skirt steak tapas was a full steak. yea, we spoiled ourselves. we also checked out the licensing show at the jacob javits center yesterday. everybody and their sisters licensing something. movies, classic characters, mustard...etc. alot of the movie studios had coo banners and promos for upcoming movies...alot of narnia, pirates of the caribbean 2, fantastic four, etc. penthouse, vivid, and others were there too, but there werent any models/pornstars. i mean...wtf, someone should lodge a complaint. after romping around the show, we taxi'd over to k-town and stuffed ourselves into a coma at cho dang gol. so good...so good.

SIDE NOTE: scariest thing seen/heard at the show. a man in a suit and tie singing the meow mix song for a good 5 minutes. that is so wrong...

> here he comes, here comes speed racer!

*sigh*...i cant believe rubbish like this is still being discussed. hi people, intelligent design is NOT science. its faux-science trying to make sense of something people really really want to believe in. we cant explain this, so it must be a result of the hand of god...er, a higher intelligence. this is akin to all the early astronomers who tried to prove that the earth was the center of the galaxy, that the mars retrograde loops were actually possible (yea...planets doing loop-de-loops), and other religiously-dictated absolutes that refused to fit into the logic of science. its especially funny how the article points out that the scientific board declined to state their case to the panel. discussing the point with the creationists would do nothing but humor their stupidity. dont feed the monkeys.

i just got a funny flashback too. its been seared in my mind ever since it happened. it was during luv boat...my summer camp in taiwan in 1998. our group was making our way thru a science museum, and we passed by the evolution section. one of the girls (who was quite religious) pointed to the display on human evolution and said (and i quote) "can you believe this shit?" *sigh*...yes sylvia, i can. welcome to the 20th century.

> dont feed the monkeys (via ny times)

[ audio selection | frou frou - let go ]

collection of random thoughts for today. has anyone else been getting random friendster messages lately? if youre a female ignore this question...im sure you get plenty. ive gotten a number of random messages in the past week. one from what looks like a cowgirl from massachusetts, one whos apparently a nympho in nyc, etc. and none of them have any added friends. fishy. i wonder if i should reply.

the bus stop post on ave. B was knocked down the other day...so as i walked to the bus stop this morning, i noticed that the sidewalk in front of the bus stop thats usually clear (bus lane and all) was packed to the brim with parked cars. thats like, super. it was so inconvenient that the elderly man who uses a mobile chair and usually catches the bus at that stop had to go to a stop further down the street to get on the bus. wtf.

heres one from left field. american mcgee's alice is apparently still being developed (who knew?), with sarah michelle gellar having been recently cast as alice. go fig. for those unfamiliar, american mcgee's (thats his name) alice was a video game released in 2000 that was a darker goth reinterpretation of alice in wonderland, where alice had to make her way back into wonderland in order to kill the queen of hearts after her parents were murdered. the current production is being helmed by marcus nispel, who remade the texas chainsaw massacre. it was once attached to wes craven, who had the brilliant notion of putting natalie portman as the titular character. *sigh*...that wouldve been rockin'. anyhoo, id still be curious to see how this project turns out. its been in development hell forever.

> sarah michelle gellar cast as alice (via aicn)

FRIDAY
i cant remember. does that mean i did nothing?

SATURDAY
hopped back to jersey for some (pre) fathers day noshing with the family. its surprising how indifferent my parents have become to what foods we eat now. theyre not as finicky as they used to be, and these days the considerations are actually placed on our resident cracker...dave.

"dad, its fathers day. where do you want to go?"
"doesnt matter. suggest something."
"how about hibachi and sushi?"
"dave doesnt like seafood..."

ok then, did u catch that? yea...weird. we ended up going to the massive buffet place near willowbrook, just because for crissakes, i cant go to the panda house again. we strolled around willowbrook for a bit after lunch, and then i got dropped off at the bus stop, just in time to catch the bus five minutes later. yay for good timing!

i met up with pho the sec i landed at port authority, and we went to go check out batman begins at the loews e-walk. pho, not realizing the massive cinema-phile that i am, showed up a wee late and we ended up with the worst seats in the house...the front row. no, not near the front row. THE front row...ouch. so we spent the entirety of the movie basically looking straight up. even with the less-than-ideal seats, holy shit batman, the movie rocked. like, it was reeeally good. and itll probably be even better if i get a chance to watch it from a distance greater than 10 ft. nolan is sickeningly meticulous with the origins of batman...covering everything from why hes a big bat, the bat ears, his cool toys, the origins of the batcave, etc etc. meticulous. as an aside, katie holmes isnt as bad as everybody says she is. even tho shes now a nutty scientologist and is engaged to the freaky tom cruise, she did good in the movie. ok, so then we went to eat at kunjip in k-town and ate ourselves stupid. the end.

SUNDAY
haha, youre kidding right?

as a bit of an appetizer to the nyaff, i caught hou hsiao-hsien's koji jiko (cafe lumiere) last nite at the anthology with jess. koji jiko is hou's homage to japanese director yasujiro ozu, and holy crap its a good thing my curiousity never kicked in and made me get an ozu dvd. the movie follows (in the loosest sense) a girl named yoko as she researches a taiwanese composer, visits her parents, drink milk, sleep, hang with her bookshop friend, ride trains, and look for a cafe named "dat". the narrative thread barely exists, and the movie is more voyeur than story. im sure there are people out there who would extoll the brilliant and steady pace of the movie and how it illuminates the minutiae of everyday rhetoric blah blah blah...but not me. do something you lazy fuck...go do drugs or sell your panties or play some dance dance revolution. *sigh* i initially compared the movie (in my head) to the works of tsai ming-liang, but then i realized that his movies actually had a sense of closure by the end of the movie. plodding yes, but it felt like a story was told. hou channeling ozu doesnt seem to fly with me. not my cup of tea...*shrug*

we did get a late din from soba-ya afterwards. mmm...squid guts and unagi...

[ audio selection | fountains of wayne - stacys mom ]

woo...a smart car! taken this morning near the bus stop on ave B. this is probably the first smart car ive seen outside of europe (technically the car had a montreal license). i just thought id just share this.

NYAFF 2005
ok ok, lets see what else i can post about. oh right...shit, forgot to post about this. the new york asian film festival is right around the corner! its kinda funny...i usually post about things and forget to email about it to people (i just assume theyve read the journal entry). except this time i did the complete opposite...weird. the nyaff starts this friday, and its got an eclectic lineup of movies from all around asia this year. most of the movies ive never even heard of, so hopefully i can see a couple of them. so far the only one i got advanced tix to is mindgames...that one looks trippy. this will be their 4th annual and my third (i missed the very first one...grrr)...so definitely check it out.

> new york asian film festival 2005

so squishy...melting...melting. springs pretty much gone, and summers come rumbling in. woo. headed north to williamsburg after work friday to catch graces art exhibit at the rkl gallery. it was a show featuring her work and some of her risd cohorts...pretty coo. alot of cornellians showed up too, and i ended up talking about the merits of hot truck (over louis' lunch) with a former cayugas waiters (?) for about an hour. scoobys for the win! makes me want to take a trip up just for the sandwiches...like now.

NO BIKEY BIKE
sattys bike run was cancelled in anticipation of the impending storm rumbling in. plus fish had to go check out real estate. so in lieu of biking, i did nothing. it was super. i popped in stereo future for a relaxing background video/soundtrack and gamed all day. no biking next weekend either...since its fathers day. so biking will (hopefully) resume the following weekend.

BIG APPLE BBQ
sunday was an outting to the big apple bbq block party at madison square...wooha! a park filled with bbq goodness from around the country...yum. well i guess it sounded coo in my head. in reality, we got loooong lines up the wazoo. we were starved when we got there, so we chose the shortest (and closest) line we saw...nyc's own dinosaur bbq. everybody got a yum plate of pork shoulders with beans and laid out on the lawn to nosh. i wanted to check out more of what the grill masters had to offer, but the lines (and laziness) kinda dissuaded me and we just marinated on the lawn instead. hmm...just scanned thru tiens excursion, and he apparently had no qualms about making his way thru multiple booths. damn youz. we walked around afterwards, grabbed some juicies from jamba juice, roamed the strand, and then split off for home. woo summer days...

[ audio selection | sam philips - i need love ]

m3ntal notes for this mild friday afternoon.

* yum noodles at rairaiken yesterday with sally. then met up with anna and sean for crepes and beer at the crooked tree. then yum lychee smoothies from jennys cafe. yay for nice weather!

* hoping it doesnt rain tomorrow or itll piss away our bike run.

* meat-fest sunday...word.

* sis got a new job...hooray! no floreeeda for her. and she gets paid more than i do now...*shakes fists*

* my creative directors trying to play match-maker right now. you so crazy...

thursday...hmm, ok. mt biking-from-hells right around the corner, so its time to do laundry again. im collecting a nice variety of scratches, scars, and bruises...so no need to stop now. im just hoping some kind of cold front blows thru because its hoooot as hell outside.

yesterday was a can of coo beans. my studio ditched out early to go check out the little boy exhibit (curated by takashi murakami) at the japan society. its like they took all my favorite japanese pop culture icons and rolled it into one bite-sized exhibit...wooha! the exhibit ran the gamut of pop iconography from doraemon and hello kitty to gundam and godzilla. they even had a "life-sized" gundam zaku head to greet you as you entered the space (complete with a scanning eye light...ooh). very coo. we chilled out in the dag hammarskjold plaza afterwards (hehe...circle of life) sipping iced coffee and noshing biscottis, and then we all bailed.

wed nite was also wings nite at croxleys (m's crew...not tiens). the hostess is still a grouchy little bitch, but we got seated (eventually...and indoors. grr!) my wings-eating capabilities have been drastically whittled down to just 4 wings for the nite, but i did make a sizable dent in the high-school-esque curly fries. mmm...curly fries.

[ audio selection | the pillows - instant music ]

random thoughts for this 90 degrees tuesday. youre on the elevator...youre happy, going to work. your elevator stops on the 2nd floor and a girl walks in. one floor later, said girl walks out. said lazy arse of a girl took an elevator one floor...because she couldnt just walk the fucking one flight? grr. its one of my pet peeves, lazy fucks who take the elevator all of one floor. its ok if theres mitigating circumstances, like theyre on crutches, or they have no legs. otherwise, god...just walk the damn one flight you stupid girl.

i ran into dre this morning on the train. which really means one thing...hes late for work again. as we're talking, he mentions how his friend brian (who i also knew from college) was getting married, and that he was the minister presiding over the wedding. ok then...right. so im wondering out loud how hes able to legally marry them when he whips out his official minister card. whoa, hes card-carrying. apparently you can go online and get legally ordained as a non-denominational minister. i did not know. dre can not only marry couples, but he can also perform baptismals and a host of other holy thingies. very coo. he has to start practicing the wedding rites/whatever, so i suggested he go and rent love actually, four weddings and a funeral, and hey...why not, the wedding singer.

wow was ashes and snow uplifting, life-changing, cathartic even. after seeing the ashes and snow exhibit friday, i immediately found the obscured road in my life that led to moral redemption and a greater hold on what it means to be a human. i leave for tibet and spiritual uplifting tomorrow. bwahaha...wtf. yea, ahem. so yes, went to the nomadic museum friday afternoon to catch ashes and snow. pretty exhibit. look at me, im a sensitive yet poetic human dancing with big whales! look over there! a kid hugging a cheetah because he too feels the pain of mother earth! a bit overly dramatic for my tastes, but the photos and the material they were printed on were nice. im not sure how much elephants and cheetahs can change my life perceptions, but they were nice. its like avant garde national geographics. i went food shopping afterwards.

I DIDNT WIPE
sattys agenda for bike riding fuckabilly was the site of last years ass-kicking, the mahlon dickerson. time heals all, so i wasnt as afraid of the trails as i was a few seconds after a big stump in the trail sent me flying. it had rained earlier in the day, so many of the trails were a bit damp. alot of the trails also seemed somewhat less rocky, and we took many of the trails with relative ease. there were some swampy areas, and i did bail once after losing my balance on a narrow bridge, but overall it was a good ride.

we cut out relatively early to go check out a crawfish festival. correction...music/crawfish festival. fish had a plan, and it involved not paying the ridiculous entry fee (the crawfish itself still cost money). we parked nearby, then went to check out the "trails" around the back of the area. after doing that for approximately a minute, we stashed our bikes in the woods and ducked thru a gate on the far side of the festival...yay! normally id feel bad about something like this (ok, not really), but the entry fee was ridiculously expensive and was mainly for the music anyway (which was country suck). the food however...holy fuck. we each got jambalaya and a box of crawfish...word! i is a happy boy. the crawfish was damn good, having been carted up from louisiana just for the festival. after noshing the food as fast as we could, we grabbed some drinks and ducked back into the shadows (read: go and retrieve our bikes before some local townie stumbled on them).

CHELSEA PARTYING
after getting home and showering, i headed out to chelsea for derricks party at the maritime. chelseas not exactly a neighborhood id normally do my drinky-drinks at, but derrick said that that was the idea...not getting too comfortable with your usual places. which is all fine and spiffy, but we were still surrounded by a thousand and one guys in untucked button-downs and cookie-cutter sorority girls. it was a sickeningly nice nite out tho, so chilling in the cabana room on the roof deck was pretty coo. i stayed til around 2ish, after having depleted my funds on $7 bottles. ouch. i spent the rest of the weekend marinating. ah...marination.

oops, forgot to publish this remainder from the weekend...in case you were wondering how this popped up into sunday out of nowhere. im not usually one to post about anything even remotely serious, but there is one topic that usually gets me worked up (um...aside from religion), and thats the environment. im by no means a die-hard tree-hugging liberal, but i am pro-environment on pretty much all issues pertaining. so reading this article kind of turned my stomach. cnn had an interesting article about the newly released atlas "one planet many people". it contrasts side-by-side satellite images taken from the 70s and 80s to current images of certain areas of the world that have seen extensive development in the past 20-30 years. in all cases, there is an obvious explosion of urban sprawl and development. some of the images are outright disturbing, with whole areas enveloped by sprawl where there was nothing just 20 years ago. the planet is only so big, and far too many people have decided to procreate (when in many cases, they really shouldnt be passing down their genes). and especially now with idiot people in positions of power just pissing all over any kind of environmental advancement, i cant imagine the satellite images getting any better anytime soon. heres to hoping for a curb to urban sprawl, over-development of land, and people who fuck like bunnies...

> one planet many people (via cnn)

[ audio selection | some - internet radio ]

i started checking out internet radio at work this week, aftering hearing all 2000+ tracks on our playlist here for the bajillionth time. sadly tho, ive yet to hear anything remotely good. its like normal fm radio, but theres hundreds of channels to poo on instead of 5. maybe im just detached from 99% of the music coming out these days, but damnit...some of these stations play absolute shit. at least i have my hit biscuits.

woopity, its friday. ill be checking out the ashes and snow exhibit at the nomadic museum later today. i was supposed to go with my creative director last friday, but the line to get in was ridiculously ass long and she didnt feel like waiting in a line...so we ditched out. everybodys in pennsylvania today, so ill sadly be treking over solo. they were talking about the exhibit last weekend at derricks party...how it was beautiful, cathartic, life-changing, blah blah blah. hmm...i dont think ive come across anything thats been life-changing (except maybe a bad relationship...cough), let alone pictures of kids about to be sat on by elephants. maybe the whole world underwhelms me and im just a sour cynic. meh...we'll see. i do like pretty pics, so at the least the exhibit will be fun to look at. afterwards i might thoroughly rethink my wayward path in life, renounce my agnoticism, and go find god at a remote seminary.

the invasion of reality tv continues unabated. the "dont feed the reality tv" signs apparently arent working...grr. anyhoo, cnn has an interesting run-down of some of the upcoming new reality shows. some sound stupid, and some sound (gasp!) kinda fascinating. ack! fuck, ill probably catch some of them just because curiosity is more powerful than common sense and good judgement. amongst the list are my picks for guilty pleasures...

> hit me baby has-been music stars compete against each other to show that they dont suck...for charity. i really just want to see wang-chung perform again.

> the scholar just kidding...this sounds boring. im all for intellectualism, and the shows all noble and whatever, but it doesnt make for good television. oh god, chad has to cram for tomorrows big exam, or he'll have to go back to working at the sweatshop!

> fire me...please yea im watching this. seeing people be dicks so they get fired...good shit. its like a reality-tv version of office space. um, yeeeea...about those tps reports.

and last but not least...

> tommy lee goes to college ok, this looks like funny shit. c'mon...tommy lee at the university of nebraska. that makes for good comedy. its the motley crue version of van wilder. follow-ups should have stifler and johnny knoxville...

> new reality tv (via cnn)