_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Monday, February 19, 2007

New York, New York

After making a valiant effort to get my thesis draft done (and not quite making it, but it was mostly okay, because it was a self-set deadline), I headed to New York to visit Alex for the long weekend.


I've put up some photos on Flickr. I blew a bunch of money on the visit, as usually happens with going to NYC. Most of it was on food: Thai crispy pork with basil; Chinese orange chicken, ginger squid and pork buns; falafel sandwich; pastrami sandwich from the famous Katz's; three of the world's best doughnuts from Doughnut Plant; etc., etc.

We again saw some stand-up comedy, and just like last time I visited, it was mediocre. Much cooler was a screening of the five live-action short films up for Oscars this year. I really like short films, and there's definitely something to be said for seeing them in a theater instead of on YouTube. We were in agreement that Helmer and Son should win, but I put the odds against it. We also saw Inland Empire, David Lynch's new movie -- it was great. I like Lynch in general, and this was a good one.

Actually, we got around quite a bit, visiting the Queens Museum of Art at the 1964 World's Fair grounds, the NYC Transit Museum, this warehouse that serves as a graffiti canvas, MoMA, and a new MoMA annex in Queens called P.S.1 that's in a converted public school. It has very current, and changing, contemporary art, and I really liked a lot of the stuff. There is an installation in the former boiler room (still with old boiler) where a pleasant cat's purr slowly creschendoes into a terrifying roar when people enter the room. Another installation has you eat one of the oranges stacked in the corner of the room, and leave the peel strewn around (it smelled very orange-y in the room, and I appreciated the snack). Lots of the other stuff was really gripping, but don't lend themselves to brief explanations.

Anyway, now I need to get back to work actually finishing my thesis draft. The good news is that in the past few weeks of working on it intensively I finally got legitimately excited about it, and what I'm saying in the paper is interesting to me, at least (it's a policy process case study of Maryland's so-called Wal-Mart Law). I got an extra little lift when I got back today to find that one person I had really wanted to talk to had finally gotten back to me, so I'll get my 22nd (!) interview under my belt tomorrow.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see...at first I assumed that was a picture from Alex's apartment, and was surprised at just how much graffiti there was. Let this be a plug for your flickr album :)

Anonymous said...

Great photos, Teago! I really like the ones of the subway handles. And congrats on your thesis draft, interview getting, etc!

Teague said...

Thanks, Hannah! Also, thanks for your anti-procrastination enforcement last week -- looks like it sort of worked!

Anonymous said...

woo-hoo! sort of is good enough for me. i figured since i can no longer walk over to where you are and tell you to hit the books, i'll have to do it here now. any skittles consumed over the weekend?

Teague said...

No Skittles, sadly. My dental bills have persuaded me to give them up for the most part, though I occasionally buy a bag at the corner liquor store where they know me as the guy who only buys candy, and always with exact change.

gastropodblue said...

Katz's deli is awesome! You should try their knishes next time. Specifically, the potato knish. Actually, I just like saying the word knish.

(though the knishes are quite good, no lie)

Anonymous said...

Wow, Teague. That is an amazing system you have for your skittles hook-up. Congratulations, I think you are well on your way to becoming a sketchy old man. A skittles/exact change/weird purchase for the type of store fetish totally belongs on some really awesome literary character.
Also, knish are delish. Really. One of my favorite foods, and potato are always the best.

Anonymous said...

I don't know why you'd need skittles, expeshially when you've got this nice can of peas here.

Buy some beer, Teague. You've even got something to celebrate!

(Speaking of pastrami sandwiches, once Hannah was reading this obit of some guy in the NYT, and when he was old he had this dream, that someone would come to his door and offer him either a million dollars for this foundation he was starting, or a corned beef sandwich. "And I think those are both achieveable goals." So now I think maybe that's my new life goal: a good sandwich.)

Teague said...

Funny you should say that, LJ, because Strong Bad is what I thought of, too, when I read Hannah's comment. I think my signature can of vegetables shouldn't be peas, though...I really don't like them. I guess they don't make canned broccoli, do they?

gastropodblue said...

Skittles and Beer? Isn't that the name of Ludacris's next album?

Pssh...tinned vegetables are so passe. What you need is a nice hot dinner of ring-pull chicken in white wine sauce

Teague said...

Eeeew. The Sainsbury's site is apparently allergic to direct links, so I looked at their list of "Hot Meat Mealts" in a can. Among those included was "Miscellaneous Stewed Steak In Gravy." If there's anything I want my meat to be, it's "miscellaneous!"

Anonymous said...

March 16th is Red Nose Day?? "It's the Big One! As we are the official retailer of the Red nose, helping to change people's lives could not be easier. Visit our ideas section (above) to see how you can make a Big difference." ??? WTF? Jesse, please to explain the British.

I'm gonna go for the "Goblin Meat Pudding," myself (it's apparently a brand, but still...). Oh, man, I could also eat the Prince's meatballs in gravy! And how to choose, the triple redundancy of "Hot Dog Sausages, American Style" or the wacky contradiction of "Ye Olde Oak Mr Greedy Mini Hot Dogs"? Okay, I must stop now.

However, I think the idea of canned broccoli grosses me out more. I'm not crazy about it to begin with, but that seems like a vegetable that would hold up particularly poorly to canning.

Anonymous said...

Oh.