Category: Manhattan

Thought this was a nice article on the teahouses of NYC by Seth Kugel. Tea and Sympathy‘s just lovely (despite the tightness of space and following the rules, it’s so worth it!). Franchia‘s pretty cool (so I recalled, anyway). So love tea, and wish I had the money to do more teahouses.

“Lost” — interesting episode, as it fills in a missing gap in the saga of “Lost.” Well, still don’t quite understand what happened with young Walt, but that’s probably for another time.

“Law and Order” — uh, yeah, weird episode. Christians Taking Righteousness Too Far. Cutter tries to prosecute. McCoy sighs. Hmm. I know, I know – I can’t expect “L&O” to go into characters too much (if at all) when the show’s really about plot (or, rather, Ripped From the Headlines), but really, sometimes I’d like to say to the characters of “L&O”: who are you and why do you care about this situation? Cutter seems to be about Law and Order – or rather, getting the conviction – but isn’t it more than that?

Plus, the cops Green and Lupo seemed a little duller than usual in this episode, although I’d have thought they’d be a little perturbed by the case’s weirdness. Frankly, I’d be a little nauseous about 10 year old Christian zealot yelling at me for being a sinner (meanwhile the kid’s an accessory to murder? Uh…). Considering the weak writing, I think it was a little obvious that the episode was the last one in the can before the writers’ strike came down.

The “L&O” episode also had a mini-“Kidnapped” reunion, in bringing Will Denton (who played the kidnap victim on that canceled NBC series) as a guest star – but no big scenery chewing with either Jeremy Sisto (the rogue detective of “Kidnapped”) or Linus Roache (the rogue FBI agent from “Kidnapped”). (oh, and the Universal HD channel has been airing those canceled episodes of “Kidnapped” of late – kind of an interesting show, but I could see why it got canceled).

Plus, playing the defendant on “L&O” – a creepy pastor who had his role in producing the juvenile Christian zealots who kill people – was Sean Astin, the former Rudy from “Rudy” and the former Sam from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

No new “Lost” or “L&O” until April, though, due to the writers’ strike.

NCAA basketball – oh-kay: my brackets are looking a little ragged. In the East region, I had Winthrop as my Cinderella into the Sweet 16; goodbye, Winthrop. I also had Indiana at least into the second round; again, too bad. In the Midwest region, I had USC into the Sweet 16; Vanderbilt and Gonzaga into the second round; bye-bye. The South region’s still okay, but not the West – Duke, Drake, and U.Conn – bye. I had a feeling that Duke wouldn’t have made it, but thought The NCAA Powers That Be knew what they were doing by ranking Duke so high; who were they kidding?

Serious stuff:

YC beat me to it in posting on the Taiwan elections. I’m no follower of Taiwan politics, but it’s fascinating stuff. Plus, I had been wondering if the Tibet developments had any effect.

Speaking of Tibet – in Time magazine this week: Pico Iyer has an fascinating look at how the Dalai Lama has been grappling the recent Chinese-Tibet tensions. Quite a read.

This was a fascinating excerpt of the video-blogged conversation between John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute, left, and Glenn Loury of Brown University on the meaning of Barack Obama’s speech.

I also thought that Joe Klein’s column in Time about Obama’s speech was also interesting – the real question is: are people (the media, the voters, the People) willing to hear complex questions?

Last, but not least: John Dean (yes, that John Dean), who admires the intellectual heft that Obama brought in the recent speech on race, posits that people might prefer their presidents to pretend (or actually be) not that intelligent. I thought Dean’s closing paragraphs were eloquent:

Let’s hope that Senator Obama continues to be willing to publicly perform at his intelligence level. Perhaps he will trust voters to realize that the key criterion to serve in the highest office should not be which candidate is the person with whom you would most enjoy having a beer. To the contrary, presidents should not be encouraging C students to continue to earn Cs so they can become president. Presidents should be telling all Americans that we can do better – which is one of the core points in Obama’s message.

Anti-intellectual Republican presidents have led this nation into a new age of unreason, as former Vice President Al Gore argued in The Assault on Reason (2007) and more recently, Susan Jacoby has reported in The Age of Unreason (2008). As Senator Obama campaigns, he can truly change America by simply refusing to play dumb. That strategy, if Obama continues it, may turn out to be not only courageous but also wise, for it is very possible that, after so many years, Americans are tired of having their innate intelligence insulted by their presidential candidates.

In the span of a week, P and I went to two epic concerts at Madison Square Garden — last Tuesday with the Foo Fighters, and last Thursday with Linkin Park. We got tickets for both shows for Christmas. While both of these Grammy winning bands have been around for more than a decade each, these were their first times playing at MSG. Both groups acted like they had gotten to the final gig on Guitar Hero II, peering down from the pinnacle in awe at the sellout crowds of over 19,000 people.

While P- is the one that tracks their albums and playlists on the radio at work, I kind of just know their “sound” – the Foo’s being the inheritors of Seattle alternative, and Linkin Park being fusion scientists, mashing up rap, rock and techno, while not being afraid of being harmonic. Of course we here have to recognize a band with two Asian American members (DJ Joe Hahn and MC Mike Shinoda).

Foo Fighters took out all the stops for their fans, going for 2 hours without intermission, bringing for the first ever in MSG a “triangle solo”.

Their encore began with a wonderful acoustic version of “Big Me”, which has become my odds on favorite for wedding song. They had a secondary stage in the back of the hall connected by a long thin runway so that the people in the “cheap seats” could get up close to them.

Linkin Park designed their stage in the round, and the band members rotated around so that the people in the “obstructed” back seats had intimate views. Of course, the crowd was looking for their seminal rap-rock songs, such as “In the End”. However, their latest stuff, such as “In Pieces”, really grew on me. They held two encores, interspersed with dark waits, causing spectators to yo-yo to and from the exits. The second encore merited a surprise guest appearance by Jay-Z, who came out of retirement to perform songs such as “Numb” from their mash up album.

We’ll be getting the live albums/DVDs for both of these events when they come out.

Sunday we went to a friend’s house for the traditional Oscar party. P- won the night with 16 correct picks, besting actual Entertainment Weekly magazine staff members at the party, which earned her a screenwriter’s script for “Juno”. Viewership was down because of a combination of a generally lackluster field and the writer’s strike aftermath, but I thought that Jon Stewart did an excellent job hosting the show. This time around, he actually was in charge. Not just for his general wittiness, and the fact that he got the show done with 10 minutes to spare, but he had the presence of mind to bring back Marketa Irglova to the stage to let her speak after she was cut off by the orchestra.

Watching the Oscars as of this writing. Jon Stewart’s pretty funny so far; the writers are doing well!

Time’s Joel Stein invites George Clooney to his house for dinner. George Clooney, former contractor, helps out by looking for the source of a beeping sound in the house… Well, either way, George Clooney’s still The Man!

This past week’s “Law and Order” – an interesting episode, but glaring plotholes. Some thoughts from the episode, in the order that the thing appeared in the episode:

So far as I can tell, the episode isn’t quite ripped-off-the-headlines, unless one counts the Real Life US Supreme Court’s future decision on death penalty by injection. (well, the S. Ct’s decision to hear oral arguments came sometime late last year, so it might have been around the time that they made the episode, I’m guessing).

Anyway, about the plot:

doctor visiting NYC is murdered; matter of mistaken identity – the wrong doctor was murdered, and it’s connected to a botched death penalty case in South Carolina;

Detective Lupo flirts with the girl at the South Carolina hotel desk;

Lieutenant Van Buren and D.A. McCoy seem to enjoy ordering their subordinates to hop on down to South Carolina, perhaps to get Lupo/Green/Cutter/Rubirosa from irritating them (well, actually, Cutter seems to both irritate and impress McCoy; can’t tell what kind of reactions the others inspire);

D.A. McCoy argues a point of law in the judge’s chambers because Exec. A.D.A. Cutter suddenly felt that there was an argument he couldn’t argue (which made no sense to me);

anti-death penalty judge allows the defendant to bring in the vegetable brain-damaged convicted killer (victimized by the botch death penalty punishment) as an exhibit in the trial of the defendant who killed the wrong doctor (what? in real NYC, this would have had a media circus coming);

A.D.A. Rubirosa seems to be Cutter’s conscience – it’ll take awhile and she’ll challenge him, but he’ll listen to her and agree to negotiate a plea instead of continuing to prosecute a lousy case;

and last but not least, I still don’t know where Cutter stands on the issue of death penalty because of the not-making sense parts of the episode.

Hmm. Well, at least Jesse L. Martin, Jeremy Sisto, and Linus Roache were all easy on the eyes.

Sat night: dinner with the alumni group at Woo Chon in the stone’s throw of K-town. Some Korean bbq. Delicious food.

Well, speaking of Korean food, kimchi’s being shipped into space, to feed a Korean astronaut. What’ll they think of next?