Door Economics All these economists and social scientist types out there trying to read the barometer of this country are missing a really obvious economic indicator: my front door. Like many old apartment buildings in previously bad neighborhoods, the apartment doors have tons of locks that were installed by past tenants. We have about 500 locks on our door - actually, we have so many that there is only like 4 square inches of wood left. It's all locks.
But, I am noticing that my behavior on which locks I use seems to change with the atmosphere in the city. During the dot-com boom, I was using the bare minimum, but now as the economy is tanking and people are losing jobs, I am locking them all (all 500 takes a while, too).
They should just wire my door so they can track which locks are used and then come up with a nice acronym that they can quote on the news every night. Robot Lock Factor "Well, the RLF is down, so we expect spending to increase"
Ten Stories Lovely. Sunday night we saw the play 'Ten Stories'. Well, it's not just one play, it's ten short plays written by lots of cool-ass folks - perfect for us struggling with gen-x short attention spans. It was great fun and took place down at the Empire State Park, which is that little grassy park between the Brooklyn bridge and the Manhattan bridge. The play started at 7:30, so we got a beautiful sunset with lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridge as the backdrop of the play. Noteworthy for robot folks - Eugene Mirman did a play that deals with the inner thoughts of people at a party. And by 'people' I mean a pirate, Eugene Mirman, and a panda bear (panda bears and pirates are always at parties in NYC - you should really visit more).
Leica M3 or M4/M5 or M6TTL? With a 35/f2. That is what I want. Will pay money for it.
Food! We went to Rice for dinner Sunday night (is Sunday still the new 'Friday'?). There is one in DUMBO, and it was much fun to sit outside in their very cool courtyard sipping drinks and eating tasty balls. Rice balls with shrimp. Rice balls with carrots. Rice balls with spinach. The other non-ball dishes were delicious, too. The menu jumps around from Asia to India to South America with prices that are often spookily cheap - cheap enough that for some items I was thinking there had to be a catch. Go check it out.
Friday night we went back to the Red Rail. It's in our neighborhood and was on the way to Tamara's house for her party. We had been there once before and hadn't been blown away, but were thinking of giving it a second chance. A year (or more) later, it's still the same. The menu looks really good, but a lot of the dishes were ill-concieved or just done badly. Grilled asparagus was almost completely burnt (blackened jerk style was what they were going for?), Mrs. Robot's crab tempura's entrée was accompanied by more tempure vegetables for a completely fried meal, and Evan's burger wasn't doing much for him. It's a cute place, though, and the staff was very friendly. Oh well.
Happy Birthday Jeff! Jeff turned the age of Jesus Saturday and we celebrated by giving him gifts and drinking margaritas at NOA, and then had an after-party-party at the that nutty karoke place on Avenue A. Great fun, but I had a killa headache afterwards from the loud singing in small rooms thing.
El Matrix A really good write-up about the annoying El Matrix.
"Perhaps. The Oracle knows beans. Whether she knows whether the beans she knows are the beans that are right for you only she will know. You must choose whether you accept what she says."
