Archive for July, 2007
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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I’m not a big fan of post-modernist works of literature. In my (perhaps haughty) opinion, messing around with typesetting and experimenting with grammar are simply devices for writers to use as crutches – crutches from being judged against real, better books. The whole point of being able to write well is to be able to convey your thoughts and descriptions within the structures of words and using the power of words to evoke the meaning you’re looking for. If you have to use “creative” means of avoiding actual writing in order to convey your meaning, then you aren’t really a writer, are you?
That said, I went to Barnes and Noble the other day to browse and was dismayed to see the following page in a “novel” on the New Fiction table –
It’s a page out of Mark Danielewski’s newest “novel,” Only Revolutions. Every page out of his new book looks like this. Actually, if you flip the book upside down and read it from the other side, it tells the other side of the story. Isn’t that cute? It’s like some sort of toy, except it’s supposed to be a book. I think I had journals when I was twelve that did something like that. On one side, it had a sun and if you flipped it upside down it was practically like having a SECOND JOURNAL! Because there was a moon and all the pages from that side had moons on them. So cool. So, so cool. I love moons. Moons are totally cool.
The most depressing part of all this is that this crap is just not enjoyable to read. It’s a pain in the ass to read/decipher experimental fiction. I’m only left to imagine that the thing that drives on the people who read this stuff is pure pretensions, the pleasure of declaring various jumbles of text as being “bold” and “daring.” I’m pleading now – please, please get over yourself and just try picking up a good book.
And yes, I realize how pretentious I sound. Yes, see that it’s ironic. Okay?
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So, after roughly seven hours of reading, I’m finished with the last Harry Potter book. Around 3:00 in the morning, I crept downstairs to finish the second half of the book (my roommate was sleeping so no reading in the room) in the study lounge. Lo and behold, there was another guy huddled in a corner reading the same chunk of text as well. Of course.
I’ve been keen on finishing it not because I was dying to know what happened – I mean, honestly, we waited for how many years? A couple days is nothing – but because I wanted to finish before some idiot accidentally mouthed off about what happens with me around. All in all, I’m pretty happy with how it ended. I’m surprised how thoroughly everything got answered – I almost wish a few more questions were left unanswered that people could debate endlessly about. My first instinct is to re-read all the books – my favorite thing about Harry Potter book is how you can go back after she reveals new information to see how the seeds were planted in the beginning novels, even if there was no way to know it at the time.
At any rate, that’s done. I need new reading material.
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I think this is probably going to be the last weekend that isn’t completely hectic for me. Between people coming and going, work, my intern project and getting ready to move out and packing for Taiwan, I’m not planning on having too much free time in the next couple weeks.
Anyway, other than purchasing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at my handy-dandy Barnes and Noble across the street and going to Pinkberry, I don’t have much else I wanted to do in New York. I even went to a Yankees game the other week! It was Old Timers’ Day so that was interesting in a kind of realizing-your-own-mortality kind of way. It was odd to see all these people who are supposed to be such legends but are now struggling to run across the field. We had fun, but honestly, it was more due to the cracker jacks, peanuts and dippin’ dots (which came in a cool Yankee cap/cup thing. Fun!). Here’s a shot of the stadium:
Oh, and my roommate and I went to this little movie theater called the Ziegfeld Theater to watch Ratatouille. The movie itself was really cute, the theater was an experience in itself. I can’t imagine seeing one of those in Plano – it was decorated like an old-style theater with lots of velvet and red draped curtains. The guy directing you to the theater had a really deep movie-fone voice, and they only had one screen and played one movie at a time. The whole thing was decorated beautifully and ornately, and when the movie started, the curtains parted, etc. Loved the whole experience.
Actually, one caveat, I really wanted to do Shakespeare in the Park, but I never really found anyone else who wanted to do it and didn’t want to go by myself. (And now it’s closed until August.) Ahhh, well. I guess I’ll just have to come back some day.
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I’ve been meaning to read Slaughterhouse-Five since the dawn of time. Seriously, I think I’ve had the book for about five years now. I’ve read Timequake, Welcome to the Monkey House, Bagombo Snuff Box, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Man without a Country, etc., etc. – loved all these books, but for some reason had never been able to get myself to read his most well-known work.
Until now, of course, and it was wonderful. Oddly enough, he cites a quote in two instances which happens to be one of my favorite quotes. I won’t recite it here – it seems cheesy when taken out of an appropriate context.
I think my delay in reading it might be because I knew I loved Vonnegut so much that I was worried I’d read it and be disappointed – with most of the writers I’ve loved the most, one day I pick up a book I thought I really loved and find that it’s not what I thought it was. I suppose maybe it’s cause I read a lot of stuff when I was young and gave more credit them than they deserved. But who knows.
At any rate, knowing that I wanted to concentrate on reading the new Harry Potter tome, I went ahead and tried to tie up some loose strings by finally finishing the book. I ended up having to start over since it was so long since I’d read the beginning, but it was well worth it. The whole time, I kept thinking about how it hit me when I found out Kurt Vonnegut was dead. It was on the Georgetown bus in Washington D.C. on our way to the business strategy case competition, day of. It was on the left column on the front page of the Post, and it made our little competition seem very insignificant.
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Alright, last post about the past month in New York. It was originally supposed to be about my activities outside of work, but since all we seem to ever do is eat at various restaurants, this has essentially become a restaurant log. There’s also a bunch of places we’ve been to that I never caught the name of. Shame. But anyway, here goes:
Weekends (a.k.a. the Restaurant Log)
The downside of working a lot is that it’s hard to do things during the week. I basically have no time whatsoever from Monday through Friday. I actually didn’t do laundry for the first time until this past weekend – I just kept buying more clothes and underwear, no joke. Right afterwards, I went online and bought more stuff from Victoria’s Secret so I could toss the crap I’d purchased from Duane Reade. Yuck.
Instead, I keep most of my social engagements on the weekends so that I don’t end up canceling on people all over the place and feeling like a jerk. Luckily, people have been in and out of New York every weekend so it’s been pretty fun with sooo much good, delicious, savory, flavorful food. For example, Heartland Brewery has really good mini-burgers.
My first weekend after starting work, I spent most of the time with Rita shopping in Soho and checking out little boutiques. At some point, we went out to a little restaurant called the Barking Dog, where we ate outside in this stone fountain area thing. Quite lovely with pretty good food, depending on what you order. Later we went to Cafe Zaiya because they have really great cream puffs. I also got together with Bo and Chen, who are both also working in the city, but we basically walked around, ate at Monster Sushi and ended up going to the Mac store for some reason. Whatever.
Second weekend, Kasey and Jules strolled into town – yay! So, all us IB kids got together again and went to some very, very random Chinese restaurant in (where else) Chi-town and got gelato afterwards in Little Italy. Also, there was this French restaurant later where Bo tried to hit on the waitress. The great thing about hanging out with other Asian people is that we can do family-style food which is always fun. Chen brought some friends and gave me a sew-it-yourself Monster doll — I’m waiting for a time to do it when I can give it the full attention it deserves.
Oh, when I met up with Rita and her friend Chelsea, we went to this really cute restaurant painted in blue that I need to remember to get the name of. We had a really overzealous waitress who listed off specials for at least a couple minutes. It was a little weird. That, and the crepe place (called Crepe Creations) we went to afterwards that had no food. Seriously. We tired to order stuff and each time they said they didn’t have chocolate, or didnt’ have “fluff” whatever that is but it’s in half their menu or whatever else. When they finally had the stuff, they ran out of apples in Rita’s apple crepe and they ran out of whipped creme and substituted powdered sugar on mine. I know the guy was no Mario Batali, but come on – whipped cream and powdered sugar are so not the same thing.
The weekend after that was busy, to say the least. My sister was in town, so we got together with two of her friends, Monica and Theresa, both people from Plano. Also, Rita came in again, but with James and Ben, so of course we have to get together. It’s funny how people always seem to be colliding here — at the same time, both Brown and Beam – Emory people – were in town, too, and they managed to run into Suhas in the subways on the one day she came into town. My sister and I ended up hanging out with her friends during the day and my friends at night, basically. It’s not worth detailing out everything that went down, but it essentially was a really fun weekend. I also went to, like, five really good restaurants that weekend and ate a lot.
RESTAURANTS INCLUDED:
Havana with the Asian crew, New Yeah Shanghi Deluxe as well as Sala with Monica and Geg, Smorgas Chef and Choux Factory thanks to Theresa (and Geg), and finally I think the Emory kids went to Tigerland but I’m not sure. It was good.
My sister managed to miss her flight out three times in a row (okay, twice it was because she was standby, but still.) The last night she was here, we went to a Japanese restaurant near my place, and for dessert, we ordered some banana sushi concoction out of curiosity. After some slight confusion regarding complementary green tea ice cream (I wanted to know where the bananas were) – it was actually really good.
Finally, this past weekend, my fourth weekend in New York, marking my first full month to be in the big city, was Rita’s birthday! Her not-quite-surprise party was held at Gyu-Kaku, and I met a ton of her friends from high school. Justin showed up because he was in town visiting Stephanie, as well as James and Jimmy-James. Justin ditched us to go to a ballet. Uncool, man. Uncool. Chaussie was also in town for Rita’s 21st, so we all hung out afterwards (Halal on 53rd and 6th, Dylan’s Candy Bar and the ever-reliable Jamba Juice), as Rita went out and got crunk with her high school people.
Anyway, that’s my story up until this point. I have half and hour before work starts, so off to breakfast. Ciao!
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