Saturday, January 10, 2004
My New Treo Page
This is silly since my tech skills aren't so great, but I've put together a new blog page to use as the home page on my Treo phone. It's called NY to Go. Basically it's a list of links to NY events and news sources that might be useful when you're out and about town. The aim is to post only one blog item daily - which will go to the archives the next day so the page of links will load fast.
If you live here and have a phone with web access, please give it a go and let me know how it looks on your phone. Also, any link suggestions much appreciated.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Netflix Can Never be Bad, Ever
Netflix has an affiliate program that looks pretty good on the surface. You get $9 for each person who opens an account by following a link from your site. Except check out the fine print: "During the Term, you will not disparage Netflix, the Netflix Site or the Netflix Service, or portray these in a derogatory or negative manner. The content of your website will, at all times, be in good taste."
I guess that leaves me out since I've already questioned their business model. Hopefully other bloggers don't trade in their free speech to Netflix -- even if you weren't planning on ever writing anything about Netflix good or bad.
Sparks Fly
After seeing my post yesterday about the name-our-restaurant contest in the East Village, Gene Steger e-mailed with a link to a similar deal in Englewood, Colorado, but with a better twist. Seems the owners of Spark's Steakhouse in Colorado got hit with a lawsuit by Sparks Steak House in NYC ordering them to change their name or else.
Rather than pay the court fees, the guys in Colorado agreed to change their name. The Denver Post explains: "But they'll have some fun doing it by holding a name-that-restaurant contest with the winner getting airfare to New York City and a $200 tab at, yep, Sparks Steakhouse."
Narco News Fireside Chat with NYT
This should be interesting: Narco News has been invited to partake in an online discussion at New York Times Digital on Monday night, Jan. 12. Narco News -- it's slogan is "Reporting on the Drug War and Democracy from Latin America" -- has been known to lob a few verbal grenades in the direction of the NYT and other corporate media and I wouldn't expect publisher Al Giordano to show undue restraint Monday.
I wrote about Narco News for the Online Journalism Review (stories here) when Narco News was getting sued here in New York (unsuccessfully) by Banamex, a Mexican Bank now owned by Citicorp.
NYC Subway Cars - Circa 'The Warriors'
It's nearly time to celebrate the 100 year anniversary of the New York City subway system. Now's a good time to celebrate the fact the cars no longer look like this. (Thanks to Morrie at That Happy Feeling for the link.)
Quote of the Week
Last weekend we saw Michael Caine in "The Statement" -- a pretty decent movie in which he plays a Frenchman who helped the Vichy regime kill Jews during WWII. Since then, he's been on the run with the help of the Catholic church, which gives him money, places to live and forgiveness every time he does something else terrible.
He desperately yells this excellent line at one of the priests: "I just want to be absolved for everything!"
Thursday, January 08, 2004
NYU Aims to Get You Laid
NYU's School of Continuing and, ahem, Professional Studies is offering up a humanities class to really give a jumpstart to Spring. One assumes every class moves to a nearby bar so everyone can pick a partner for study?
Sex and Perversion: Stimulating Readings for Mind and Body
X02.9098 / Non–Credit / $370
SPRING 2004
What is the nature of sexual diversity? In a world of sexual tumult, conflicting values and moralities, the erotic can be the most ardent search for identity. But how can we understand it? Narrative variations of the erotic attempt to fathom human sexuality and its varied, vital meaning in culture from Platonic love to sadomasochism. Readings: Beauvoir's The Second Sex; Sappho's Poems; Sade's The New Justice; Genet's The Thief's Journal; Miller's Tropic of Cancer; Bataille's Story of the Eye; Offit's Virtual Love; Colette's The Pure and the Impure; Tanizaki's The Key; Mirbeau's The Torture Garden; Mishima's Confessons of a Mask; Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil; Norman O. Brown's Love's Body; Bushnell's Sex and the City; Baker's Vox and The Fermata; Ballard's Crash; T.S. Roche, ed., Noriotica; and Liz Belile, ed., Gynomite.
Section 1
Monday 6:20pm-8:00pm February 23 - April 26
8 Sessions
Location: Washington Square
Instructor: Jerry Piven
How About a Restaurant Called 'Cheap Gimmick'
I have no idea if this is legit, but a couple of guys opening a falafel restaurant near St. Mark's Place are holding a name-our-restaurant contest and will pay $2,500 to the winning entry. Wouldn't it be more fun if they had to choose the winner at random out of a hat? I found them on craigslist.
In Case Of Amy Langfield - Break Glass
I'm big in Japan! Well, almost. A few months ago I was interviewed by a Japanese film crew doing a documentary about the blackout. The producer had read my blog entry about my two-hour adventure on the Q train and wanted me to tell the tale. They filmed it on the shuttle platform at Grand Central. I think the show aired in November. The producer was nice enough to mail me a video, which arrived in the mail yesterday. It was all in Japanese but a few segments had English titles. Mine was "In case of Amy Langfield." Here's a couple of screen shots for your amusement.
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
Very Grand Central
The husband and I ended up on a hot date last night at Grand Central Terminal. Very nice surprise. We were only going to meet at the Oyster Bar for a drink, but I got there first and had plenty of time to chat with the waiters out front who have been on strike for more than a month. One of the gents was nice enough to direct us to try the Campbell Apartment upstairs.
First we tried out the Whispering Arches, where you stand in diagonal corners of the Guastavino arches and can hold a secret whispered conversation with your partner all the way across the hallway. But you have to get your nose real close to the corner. Pretty cool.
The Campbell Apartment was formerly the private deluxe office of John Campbell but now it's merely one of the swankiest watering holes in the city. Unfortunately the prices are such that you're not going to hang out for more than a round or two. I had a beer and the husband had white wine - and after the tip to the bartender, dear husband was able to rub together the two quarters remaining from his $20. Cigars and cigarettes were abundant.
In the five years we've lived here, neither of us have had Grand Central on our regular commute so have spent very little time in the fabulous terminal. I always get lost there and resign myself to wandering around the whole place until I happen upon the place I was looking for. Dinner was another neat revelation at Cipriani Dolci where they sat us at the edge of the balcony looking straight down on the main concourse of Grand Central. Awesome view every direction you look. The food was good though I had their signature bellini, which was only so-so. The place is ideal for a trek with the out-of-towners -- or anyone in need of a reminder why this city is so fabulous.
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Tough NYC Schools
Seems I used to live across the street from the most dangerous high school in Manhattan - Washington Irving at Irving and E. 16th. Yet now I live in Brooklyn - the borough with the most schools to make the mayor's list of most violent schools.
'It's a Cookbook!'
Oh that silly Ken Layne. He put his name on a list that went up to Mars. I guess he didn't realize the Martians are going to use that list to decide which ones of us to eat first.
Monday, January 05, 2004
It's All About Me
Lest you start thinking I'm posting to this blog for you, dear reader, here's a reminder: It's pretty much all about me. And to show my selfishness and lack of tact in thinking about you, here's a list of links I'm posting only because I plan to poke around the sites when I have more time:
the Shifted Librarian's Treo 600 review
NYC Health Dept.'s online database of restaurant inspection results
Jane Galt on judges forcing journalists to reveal anonymous sources
Archives of awesome old NYC pictures
Lowney resolves to post a picture a day
Clever "Simpsons" jokes
2004: Return to Decadence
Elizabeth Spiers at New York mag's The Kicker initiates 2004 with a call for "more decadence."
Sunday, January 04, 2004
A Token Post
Kevin at Forgotten New York has a nice new pictorial of the Roosevelt Island skytram with a history of the nearly extinct New York City subway token.
All the New Boys
Congratulations to a bunch of my friends who've reproduced recently. Check out baby pix of Jeff and Erin's little boy Wyatt; Melissa and Rick's new lad Sean; and Doug and Anicka's Gabriel.
No Nervous Tourists Here
For reasons you're probably not interested in, I was in Midtown on both Friday and Saturday afternoons. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: The tourists are back. It's definitely pre-Sept. 11 levels. Mind you we're still at an elevated alert level but the tourists are from all over -- including families from Middle America with little tykes in tow, which I don't think we've seen much of here in the past two years.
Cameraphone Stuff
Here's two cool things about camera phones, for those of you who care:
I spent the first few minutes of 2004 at Prospect Park with my husband and a thousand or so other Brooklynites watching the free fireworks show on the lawn. As soon as the first fireworks went off, I snapped a picture with my Treo 600 and immediately sent it to my buzznet account which is also linked up to syndicate atop of my webpage. Cell phone and land lines are traditionally jammed on New Years, so I was very curious to see if I could get images out more quickly via Sprint's separate phone/data line. Indeed, I posted about four pictures - which went through at typical daytime speed - before I could get a cell phone call through either to Brooklyn or California phone lines. (I could have posted more pictures, but I was busy getting my New Year's kiss.) Twenty minutes after midnight, I still couldn't make a cell phone call, but I could get through on a land line to talk to my folks in 2003 California.
So what it means - I think - is that in a case like the August blackout when it was extremely difficult to make cell phone calls, I could have just taken a picture of myself with my cameraphone (which I didn't yet own) and post it to my webpage - or e-mail it to my husband, parents, in-laws, friends and everyone else who was worried - to let them know I was OK.
The other cameraphone thing I wanted to flag is the BlueHereNow page that looks as though its finding "news" in photoblogs and rounding them up by category. Looks like they've used my stuff a few times in the New York news section.
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