NY Return / Summer Freebies

After a summer of writing exceptionally long, and frankly rather boring, posts about politics and social issues in Kyrgyzstan, I am approaching my return not to the states, but to state-side blogging, with a great deal of apprehension. I've put off writing even the smallest little posts, for fear of ballooning into swollen tomes of the everday doldrums.

So when I confess that, in fact, I've had a very eventful 2 weeks since returning to NYC on Aug 10, and that after an equally eventful 2 weeks romping through Oklahoma, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, I hope to have conveyed enough promise for you to stick with what I assure you will be a very brief recap of the individual high points.

August 10:: Return to NYC

My plane was delayed, then on-time, then delayed, then magically somehow early. All of that was quickly negated by the much longer-than-usual bus ride to my apartment, where I finally arrived around 10 pm on a Monday night. As I've mentioned earlier - and often - I don't really mind living in New York, but I absolutely HATE returning to New York. After a few days, the various smells, noises, and other little annoyances fade into the background of your scowling NY existence, but fresh off the airplane, NYC always makes me want to run away. It's something like the effect of the humidity wall that greets you on the jetway at Houston International, except that it attacks all of your senses, and AC doesn't cure it. On the plus side, our darling subletters left the apartment in great shape, including the addition of several new cleaning tools, and more sea salt than I've ever seen outside a health food store.

August 11:: Shelley's return

A little less than 24 hours after I touched down at LaGuardia, it was shelley's turn. She was not delayed, but was packing 3+ months of clothing and other supplies in one ginormous piece of luggage, so I made my way out to the airport to pick her up and manhandle the thing home. Good thing too, that bus was crowded and I was happy to give Shel one less reason to stress out -- she like wise reacts aversely to the sudden odors, grime, and lack of personal space.

August 12:: The Great Unpacking

Around this time last year, Shelley and I were driving across the country with most of our wordly possessions in a much-too-large Penske truck. This time around, with no where new to move into, we nonetheless had some unpacking to do. In light of the summer sublet, we decided to get as much of our stuff out of the way as possible, and I must say I'm quite proud of how densely we managed to pack our studio. Of course, we had no idea what had gone in which random cubby hole... The scene was quite a disaster, but it didn't take us more than a few days to get it sorted (as the British would say).

August 14:: Flex the NY Muscle

Except for the weather, Summer is a great time to be in New York. There's free stuff everywhere, from film screenings and outdoor folk festivals to dance parties, bizarrolympics, theatre, and all sorts of live music. Having missed 90% of the season already, Shel and I endeavored to make the most out of the various "final event of the season"s going on. In this case, we caught the last act of the River to River NYC festival: School of Seven Bells at the South Seaport. It's not a band that rolls off the tongue or hits the billboard Top 40, but I heard one or two SVIIB songs on my trusty KRTU Nocturnal Transmissions webcasts, and thought they might actually be to Shelley's liking. The Seaport itself is bizarre and wonderful. Something of a mixture of a mall (the shopper's unicorn in Manhattan), a pier, a boardwalk (not to be confused with a pier) and an old town square renovated in the late 1990s. Because we were in the area, we took the subway over to Brooklyn and walked across the B. Bridge to get there, enjoying a scenic stroll, some good-natured meandering, and a sunset en route to what turned out to be a really fantastic concert (the same cannot be said for the opener, "XX," who managed even to make Dos Equis lamer by association).

btw, if you want a great new source for freebie events in the metro, try prximity.com

August 15:: NYC Museum

Some advice. 1) While it may not be much of a draw for the average tourist, it is STRONGLY ADVISED for anyone living in NYC to make a visit to the Museum of the City of New York post haste. Not only does it have some fun insight and history into the city's origins (like, why it's called Wall street), and its lingering Dutch legacies, but currently they have an exhibit on the reconstructed natural history of Manhattan circa 1600. That may not sound fascinating, but IT IS! Really great exhibits show what this island of 2 million looked like when it was population 600. Crazy cool.

Advice #2 - Don't get so absorbed with the Natural History part that you don't realize the museum is closing momentarily, and neglect to see the other 2/3 of it. Bummer. Free for Columbia students, $10 general admission.

I would point out that we planned to next visit the Guggenheim on their special Saturday night "Pay What you Want" session, but after we spotted the 2-block line of tourists waiting to get into the max-capacity building, we decided to pull a "Guggenheim Abortion," a term I find it hard not to love despite its unintentionally controversial innuendo.

We capped it all off with a walk through Central Park - Shelley's first look at the Resevoir, and our mutual discovery of a cool bridge lacking only in a friendly troll.

August 16:: India Day/Summer Stage

Parades are another of the small miracles that make living in NY not so bad, and provide employment for I'm guessing millions of otherwise introverted high school band geeks. Whether it's ethno-national (India Day Parade, West Indies Day Parade, etc.), patriotic (Thanksgiving) or just drunken fun (St. Patrick's), parades entail a wealth of horribly-amplified music, gaudy SUV embellishments, face painting, low-tier politicians, and cheap street food. They not only bring out the crazies, but they celebrate their participation. India Day Parade was relatively tame, but the flock of teenage girls hurredly keeping up with the Jay Sean float (he's so hot right now!)

provided ample entertainment.

Later in the day we hung out along the East side of Central Park for the last concert of the Summerstage festival, with reunited underground rock stars Dinosaur, Jr. We got there just as the Walkmen - my odds-on favorite for the best act - were starting, and were not the least disappointed. It didn't sound much like the 2 Walkmen albums I own from a few years back, but it still sounds fun and creative. Dino-Jr, on the other hand, bless their tired, pioneering souls, just weren't blowing our socks off. Shelley quietly commented that the lead singer sounded like the Counting Crows, and while I rose to his defense - "you mean, the Counting Crows sounded like Dinosaur Jr," the similarity was unfortunately undeniable, regardless of which way the river flowed. We left about 1/2 way through their set. Sorry guys.

August 17:: Skywalk(er)

We elected to skip the Bryant Park screening of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (shelley has an on-and-off alien phobia), and then, at the last minute, ditched a screening of North Korean Propaganda films at one of the more *cough* Communist of theatres in the West Village. This left us along the Hudson for a sunset over New Jersey, then we stumbled into a new NY landmark I'd been trying to hunt down - The Skywalk. Any

connection to Mr. George Lucas is, I'm sure, legally unbinding,

but converted elevated train track that runs North-South along the Western edge of lower Manhattan is really a triumph of Parks&Rec. It's retro-cool lines are made all the bolder for its pleathora of flora, ikea-esque wooden benches, and fluid use of textured concrete panels. It runs up 10th Ave from 10th to 18th street, and is really a spendor for all its simplicity. Highly Advised for tourists and locals alike.

August 19:: Pineapple Expr-ASS (or How Freebies Sometimes Bite Back)

Had you asked me the day before, I would have confessed to thinking Judd Apatow a modern cinematic genius, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg bards of our age, and the combination of the three an unstoppable force for irreverent, but ultimately intelligent and entertaining movies. Knocked Up. SuperBad. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. As much as she hates to admit it, these are even some of Shelley's favorite movies. Her favorite joke? In FSM when Paul Rudd asks, "Does the Carpet match the pubes?" See! If they can make Shelley like something THAT low-brow, they must be onto something.

But whatever they're onto, it's clearly not the creative potential of marjuana. I don't know how much they smoked while writing Pineapple Express, but I'm sure that you'd need to toke twice as much to enjoy the end product. Shelley and I were actually pretty excited to go watch a free outdoor screening at Pier 54 on the Hudson just after nightfall. Accomodations weren't amazing - it's a big concrete slab on the water - but they had a big projection screen and decent audio setup. While the movie came out last summer, neither of us had seen it at the time, and were rather excited about the possibility: A pot movie that isn't just about baker humor, but adds a more developed human angle!

wrong. I won't further pummel a movie you've already learned to shun, or never planned to see anyway, but let's just conclude that the best line in the movie is, "He's punching my bum." Best. Line. It didn't help that we were surrounded on all 4 sides by people discretely lighting bongs and bowls in their laps, as if they were pulling a fast one on the cops sitting there in the dark watching them do it. Seriously - bong hits at a Pineapple Express screening? Are you the people who wear the band's t-shirt to their own concert? That's Lame, even for me.

Weber

:: (lame) Texpatriot