Welcome to the Hotel California

One great thing about living in New York is that you get to see lots of old friends. People are constantly passing through the city (generally not to visit you), and it the upshot is that you get to maintain relationships with buddies from nearly every phase of your life without leaving Manhattan.

Not only do you get the opportunity to catch up, you get the opportunity to host. A lot. Hotels are very expensive in the city, and so travelers are always grateful for a couch or air mattress to occupy. I don't mind this at all - I like helping my friends, spending more time with them, and showing off my apartment and neighborhood. Plus, I am usually repaid in drinks or a free dinner, further sweetening the deal.

During the past few weeks, however, I've played host to so many friends that I've scarcely had time to drop off and pick up sheets and towels in between. Here's a quick roster of people who've snoozed on my couch lately:

Eric - a friend via my brother via his wife. He came to the city for the weekend from D.C. with his friend Joanna for no good reason except that they felt like it. She stayed in Brooklyn, and he stayed with me. He is the tallest person to have slept on my couch - it was barely long enough! We had a great time checking out the Brooklyn flea market and drinking lots and lots of beer - he's German, so it was a necessity.

Phil - a dear friend from college who came at the tail end of a cross-country trip primarily to watch several Rays vs. Yankees baseball games. He came rather unexpectedly (i.e. sent me a text message at work saying that he was arriving that afternoon!) and stayed for about five days. As repayment for my hospitality, he has offered to fly me to Florida to visit him at his parents' beachfront home in fall, an offer I believe I will accept.Phil is from the south originally, and as such is as charming as the day is long, making it a pleasure to see him.

Virginia - a former dorm-mate from Cate. Virginia had just returned from working in Georgia (the country, not the state) and traveling through Turkey, and she had a lot of fascinating things to tell me about her adventures. She's been living in D.C., but will move to California soon and I'm sorry to see her and her sweet husband leave the east coast. She's one of the most interesting people I know, and it was a pity she could stay only one night.

Michael - one of my traveling companions during my summer in Berlin before my senior year of college. Every time I see Michael, I resolve to see more of him and then somehow never manage to do it. He came down for the weekend from Boston, where he is working on a Ph.D in some sort of ludicrously difficult engineering/math/physics-related topic. He's one of the smartest people I know, and well-rounded to boot (he's a pretty phenomenal chef, plays the cello, takes great photographs, and speaks several languages), but is remarkably down-to-earth and easy to talk to.

Cathy, another friend from Cate, will be passing through the city in about a week, but unfortunately I'll be in Germany and will not get to see her. That misalignment didn't stop me from asking her to stay, however, and she'll be picking up a set of keys when she arrives in New York - I'll be gone already at that point - and keeping the place from sitting empty in my absence. While I'm sorry that I'll miss her - she's on her way back from two months in Haiti and I am dying to hear about her experiences - she comes to New York fairly often, so I'm sure I'll get to host her again soon. And now I have someone to water my tomatoes.

Fruit of my Labor

 While this little tomato’s existence off the plant was short-lived – his fiber, lycopene, calories, and vitamins were coursing through my system minutes after this photograph was taken – he was well loved and appreciated nonetheless. This was the first non-lettuce-or-herb product of my garden, and as you can see from the photographs below, there will soon be a lot more where he came from. I’ve got two lovely peppers in the works, too. Nothing quite like a home grown tomato, even if you did grow it on a fire escape.

My Super-Sweet Office

Here, at last, are pictures of my not-so-new-anymore office! It’s usually bright and so sunny that I think I’ve used the overhead light only once, but as you can see, the day I picked for my photo shoot was dark and rainy. I’ve yet to hang my diploma on the wall, but otherwise I’m pretty well settled in. Favorite features include the double-monitor computer set up that allows me to spread out documents and work more efficiently from two screens at once, and my plant, which is still alive after four whole weeks.

The perks of working in my office are numerous. Not only do I love the job, I get free coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and Diet Coke all day, access to the snacks we supposedly stock for the kids – Goldfish will get anyone through even the roughest day – and there is free lunch ordered for us every Friday, as if Fridays weren’t already great enough. I have plenty of time to reflect, research, and develop my own materials, and I can shut my door whenever I want to and no one bothers me. I like this when I need to concentrate or when I want to rock out to Kanye West while doing something fairly mindless like redesigning a worksheet. It’s particularly breathtaking to have this privilege after working in a classroom, which is pretty much public territory.

In the right corner of my desk is an obligatory framed family photo as well as a cool  pen stand with a stone globe on it that my parents sent as an office-warming gift.

This is the view out of my rain-spattered window. I look right down on the flower district (you'll have to take my word for this, considering the quality of this photo), which means lots of nice foliage to admire. It's not a Central Park view, but I still think it's pretty awesome.

M Marks the Spot

Last night Ed and I went to a great, very hip restaurant on the west side called Perry Street. It is Jean-Georges's new restaurant (this meant little to me, too - thank heavens for Wikipedia, which taught me that he is a French chef living in the US) and Ed had been wanting to try it for a while. We met two of his friends, Leonard and Maggie, there for dinner and drinks.

At night, Perry Street feels more lounge-y than it appears here.

The food, atmosphere, and company were all great, but rather than trying to describe the former two categories myself, I'm going to let Maggie do it via her savvy food blog M Marks the Spot. Read her review of our dinner here, and keep an eye on her blog if you're a New Yorker or simply a fellow foodie!

Stranger in a Strange Land

On Saturday night, after a day spent hanging out with a group of college buddies in dive-y bars around the city, Ed, Phil, Beernuts (not his given name), and I hailed a cab and headed to the Empire Hotel. I thought I had never been to the Empire Hotel, but it turns out I have; it's got a great seafood restaurant on the second floor and a swanky bar, both of which I have sampled. If I recall, I went on a Tuesday night last time, and things were quiet and charming. Things on Saturday, it turns out, are different.

One of Ed's friends was having a birthday party on the roof of the hotel, so I sort of expected to just go up and hang out with the group. Not so. As we pulled up, we saw a huge line out front. I loathe waiting in line to get into clubs, particularly because often the only purpose for the line is to drum up publicity; the staff will let people into a nearly empty club slowly to make it look like it's so popular that everyone is dying to get in. On a lovely summer Saturday night at 10:00, though, I was pretty sure that the line for a rooftop bar was legit (and when we finally got in, it turned out that I was right).


Huge bouncers in suits managed the flow. All told, we waited about 20 minutes to get in, which, though not terrible, was certainly not my favorite part of the evening. The line crawled forward, but, as is typical in New York, small clusters of scantily clad women were admitted without a second glance. I'd gotten dressed that morning expecting to go to a baseball game and, though I was wearing a reasonably fashionable sundress, was hardly dressed to the nines. But even if I had been, it wouldn't have mattered because our group ratio was off. Men are typically the big spenders at these places, and if they walk into a room full of women, they're more likely to stay and buy lots of expensive drinks. Club owners know this and try to ensure that over half of the clubbers are women, the more attractive the better. Accompanied by three men, I was doomed to wait. A group of about six middle-aged women who were trying really hard (and failing) to look hip were in line directly behind us, and they were pretty indignant about the whole experience. At one point Ed turned and very gently explained to them why a bouncer would be more likely to admit a 21-year-old girl in a short, tight dress than a 45-year-old woman tottering in the kind of strappy heels that were popular 15 years ago. He tactfully stuck to economic arguments rather than straying into more obvious but perhaps less welcome justifications. (For the record, I have nothing against 45-year-old women who totter in 15-year-old, strappy heels, I just don't really understand why they'd pick such a swanky, superficial scene. When I'm 45, I plan to wear flats and sit in dark wine bars that I don't have to wait in line to enter. I will sprawl, laugh as loudly as I want, and enjoy myself.) Ed pointed out that there was really no need for anyone to wait; you could overcome any level of square-ness with enough money. We didn't see anyone bribing the bouncers, though.

After about ten minutes, a bouncer who was patrolling the line told Beernuts that his running shoes weren't in dress code. Beernuts ducked out of line, waved, and headed for the train station before we could process what had happened. He had to get back to Connecticut and claimed not to mind, and he probably really didn't - this wasn't shaping up to be his kind of party. (When we finally got in, I wondered whether anyone would even have been able to make out his shoes between the crowds and the low lighting.) A Latino girl in a tight dress was hand-in-hand with a black man in front of us. When they got to the front, the bouncer told them the rules stipulated that they had to reserve a table (for a hefty fee) or abide by the $125 per person minimum at the bar. I murmured "$125?!?" to Ed, who didn't reply. Moments later, the couple left the line and walked away. "What you just saw was profiling," Ed said as soon as they, and the bouncer, were out of earshot. I was disliking this place more and more.

We got in without any warnings about table reservations or minimum bar tabs, got into another line, and were ushered into an elevator by another watchful bouncer a few minutes later. The doors opened into a dark, crowded room, and we walked through flashing lights past the bar and onto the roof.

Hmmm. It's much nicer when it's empty.

 It was nice up there, but so crowded it was hard to get a sense of the atmosphere. As the only woman on the roof not in towering heels, there was a forest of heads and shoulders between me and the view, so I wasn't able to see to much from our center table. Phil immediately disappeared and later told us that he went exploring and got locked on a higher level of the roof for a while which, while somewhat lonely, had a better view. Most people milling around were impeccably dressed, just like the scene you imagine you'd see in every New York club but is, in fact, pretty far from reality. It was at once fascinating and alienating. I decided that I'd probably really like it if I came back again on a Tuesday. I met several of the birthday boy's friends and had about 1/3 of a cocktail, but the events of the day were starting to wear on me. I'd gotten up before 6:00 A.M. to run four miles before my six-mile race. I'd run it pretty hard, then met up with my friends for a day of nursing beers in sultry heat. I was exhausted. Happily, it wasn't really Ed or Phil's scene either, and after putting in our time, we decided to call it a night. It was much easier to get out, happily, than it was to get in.

Another Celebrity Encounter

Supermodels? Lurch from The Addams Family? Spike Lee? Yeah, I've hung out with all those guys. (Well, the last one I lived vicariously through Dave, but still.) But last night I topped them all.

A college friend of mine has been staying with me for a few days, and last night we met up with his friend Mike who is the lead guitarist in a band. Which band you ask? Get ready for this: He plays in the band that does the FreeCreditReport.com commercials, Victorious Secrets. Seriously. I actually hung out with this guy. He showed us pictures of his two-year-old daughter, talked about how cool his wife is, and dazzled us with tales of his glamorous life in Detroit.

Mike is second from the left, in the yellow t-shirt.

See two of his commercials here and here. In the golf commercial he's the guy standing in the boat in the middle of the water hazard, and in the tour bus commercial he's the guitarist in the blue button-down shirt.

Some people may be starstruck by this kind of encounter, but I've lived in New York long enough that I'm not fazed.

In all seriousness, he's a childhood friend of Phil's and an outstandingly nice guy who just happened to be passing through New York. Phil says he's the best guitar player on the planet, but I didn't get to hear him play so I can't affirm this. He told us about this strange gig his band has landed and about shooting commercials and staying in 5-star hotels, and then heading back home for a few months at a time to work four days a week and hang out with his family. It always kills me when people find ways to be really successful doing things that I'd never have considered. In my mind, you star in a blockbuster, become president, or win the Nobel Peace Prize and you've pretty much made it. Being featured in the FreeCreditReport.com commercials, however, would never have occurred to me. You wouldn't recognize Mike on the street and he's not fabulously wealthy, but he owns both a condo and a house, gets to be home with his wife and daughter a lot, and makes a very comfortable living playing music. It may not be the American dream, but it makes me wish I'd taken guitar lessons.

Un-Curbable Enthusiasm

In the introduction to the Real Women talk with Eve Ensler a few weeks ago, a trustee from the board of directors at the 92nd Street Y announced that Larry David and Jeff Garlin, creators and stars of HBO's wildly funny show Curb Your Enthusiasm, would be participating in a panel discussion at the Y in a few weeks to introduce the eighth season of their show. She told us that we were the first to know about it, and that we should run, not walk, to buy our tickets. I took her advice and, gulping a little at the slightly steep asking price (I'm employed now! I can do this!), bought two tickets. I purchased them online about three hours after the announcement was made - I had to wait until I got home from the show - and even then, the best seats I could get were in the 21st row of the theater. I don't know how fast they sold out, but I do know that last night there were crowds of hopefuls gathering outside the theater asking if anyone had an extra and offering exorbitant prices for them.

David plays a sour, middle-aged man who lives in L.A. and gets himself into brilliantly ridiculous situations every five minutes.

Garlin and David

Ed and I arrived at the Y moments before the lights went down. I knew there would be a panel discussion, but I didn't know we'd be getting a sneak preview of the first episode of the eighth season, which airs on HBO on July 10th. We are not supposed to divulge details about the content of the episode before it airs, but let me assure you that it was outrageously, riotously funny. People around us were laughing so loudly and continuously that I nearly missed about half the dialogue, and the woman next to me practically landed in my lap a few times. I will say that the episode, in keeping with the background of nearly all of its cast, centers around Jewish themes, and there is no place to see something like this quite like the 92nd Street Y. The Y is not affiliated with the YMCA but was originally the 92nd Street Young Men's and Women's Hebrew Association. You don't have to be Jewish to attend the events, but I think I was the only one in the theater who wasn't. My time in Israel helped me understand a few of the jokes that would otherwise have been inaccessible, so that my sides hurt just as much as any of the tribe members around me by the end. As the lights came up and we wiped our eyes weakly, Larry David, Jeff Garlin, and fellow cast members Susie Essman and Sheryl Hines took the stage, accompanied by NBC news anchor Brian Williams, who served as moderator.

Brian Williams

The panel discussion was hilarious, to the point that I almost got tired of laughing. David is effortlessly funny, and nearly every time he opened his mouth he left the audience in hysterics. Essman is famous for her portrayal of a Garlin's wife on the show, who has a foul temper and even fouler language, and while she seemed to have checked her prickly personality at the door, her colorful language was turned on full force. Hines was witty in a mild mannered way. Garlin, though, was my favorite, simply because he has one of the best laughs I've ever heard. He'd be struck by an idea and start hooting with laughter so hard that he'd be unable to share it until he'd collected himself, but his laughter was so contagious that we all had to laugh with him. Williams was a perfect moderator, adding to the comedy by asking zany questions in his smooth, serious baritone.

Sheryl Hines

One of the most interesting things about Curb is that all of the dialogue is improvised on the spot. The actors read the premise of the scene before shooting starts, then they invent lines that will take the plot where it needs to go. David says they generally require far fewer takes than most other shows in which the actors have to memorize their lines first. Celebrity guests, who appear fairly frequently on the show, don't even get to read the synopsis - the camera just starts rolling and they have to figure things out from the regulars' lines as they go. It was clear that all four actors who talked to us last night couldn't enjoy their job more. They all said that they're constantly laughing, and that Larry is the funniest person they know.

Essman's character is an enthusiastically bad dresser.

I have not seen many episodes of Curb, actually - I've never had HBO. But after last night, my Netflix queue is going to undergo some serious rearranging. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Interblog, Again

Summer is a slow time here at work. Many kids are away at camp or on vacation, or else their parents just want to give them a break from academics, and the upshot is that we have far fewer cases each week. While I anticipate three to four kids per week in fall, I'm doing an average of one now. This leaves me with lots of free time, and one way I've been filling it is by writing for the Center's blog.

Personally, I think our blog is pretty interesting. Entries are about anything and everything related to kids and education. They might share a resource, answer questions, summarize new research or do any number of other things. Susan, our resident lawyer and expert on special education, tends to write for it the most, so entries concerning what's legal in schools and what rights parents have are most heavily represented. Mine, naturally, will be skewed towards reading, writing, and other facets of language arts, though I will try to keep things varied. Today, my first entry has been published (access it here), and meanwhile I'm stockpiling a whole bunch of other entries to be put up over the busier months when I have less time to write them.

To those even remotely interested in any of this stuff, I recommend bookmarking the page.  There's bound to be something relevant now and then, and I hope even more frequently than that!

Remember Korea

This morning, I was waiting rather blearily for the train when a strongly accented voice said, "Excuse me?" I looked up to see an Asian kid - maybe 20 - with baggy shorts, a messenger bag, and a black baseball cap covering anime-style hair. "I go to 48 Street," he said. "What...?"

I explained, with lots of hand gestures and very short simple sentences, the kind I revert to in this kind of situation thanks to my year in Japan, that the 1 train stops at 42nd and 50th, and that he should go to 50th and then walk two blocks south. He seemed to understand the number 50 - he held up five fingers on one hand a fist with the other to show the number - but still looked confused. "Wait," he said, and began rummaging in his bag, at last producing a subway map. He pointed to where he wanted to go. "Oh, Twenty-eighth Street!" I said. "Ah, twenty..." he murmured, looking a little ashamed of himself. I showed him where we were on the map and pointed out the route he'd be taking. He seemed relieved to learn that he'd managed to find the correct platform. "I am late for my language school. First day," he said.

He sat next to me on the bench and we waited for the train. "Are you from Japan?" I asked, to pass the time. "No, Korea," he replied. I explained that I spoke a little Japanese, but no Korean. He smiled, but I'm not sure that he understood. Then the train arrived and I wished him luck and he thanked me and shot me a huge smile as we both got on. I settled into a rare empty seat while he studied the map in another part of the car.

As the train was approaching 28th St., which was also my stop, he sat down next to me. "Excuse me, sorry," he said. "You are New Yorker." "Uh, yes," I said. "I am not Japanese, I am Korean," he said. "Right," I said. "I want thank you, and I think you don't know Korea," he said, and pulled out a small cellophane-wrapped package from his bag. "This from Korea. Cell phone," he explained, handing it to me. "Now you know Korea." I thanked him and asked him the name of it in Korean, but he didn't seem to understand the question, and then the doors opened and he walked quickly out of the car ahead of me. He turned back for one last look and said, smiling and tapping the side of his head, "Remember Korea!" and then he was off.

It was, certainly, a very thoughtful gesture to give me a gift for pointing him in the right direction, and I can understand his desire to make his country known in the United States, where everyone who is Asian is lumped together into one category. Though my assumption that he was Japanese was motivated by hope that I could use a few of the rusty words I remember to make communication between us the smallest bit easier, I was still a little embarrassed that he thought I'd made such an assumption. Still, if he was hoping to help me distinguish between Japan and Korea with his gift, it wasn't a great choice. These cell phone ornaments were hugely popular in Japan as well; nearly everyone had at least one dangling from their phone. In fact, most cell phones came with a notch dedicated solely for hanging these decorations. This one, a girl with a rather protuberant hairstyle holding a flower, would have been a perfect fit in Japan. But I never had one on my phone there, reasoning that less bulk was better, so this is the first one I've ever owned. Although I don't think I'll put it on my phone here, it will certainly help me to remember Korea.

Civil Unrest and Rats

On my way to work the other day, I saw the biggest rat I've spotted yet in New York outside the Affina Hotel on 7th Avenue. Happily, it was inflatable.

An R.O.U.S. indeed

Two men wearing work clothes were handing out fliers, which pretty much no one was collecting. This surprised me. I was pretty interested in this rat. I took a flier from a man, who thanked me, and continued on my way as I read. Apparently there has been some reconstruction in this particular Affina hotel and the carpenters' union (or something) feels they haven't been getting the benefits they deserve, so they staged this protest. I wonder how much money Affina is supposed to give them, and how that amount compares to the cost of renting, transporting, and filling the rat. Although it has been the most poorly attended protest I've seen in the city, it is certainly the most elaborate.

Cultural Sabatoge

I set out for my weekend run in the park this afternoon, and it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to be able to put in the distance I was scheduled to go, nor stay at the pace I was supposed to run it. For one thing, I slept in, read for a while, and played around with my computer and therefore didn't get out of the house until 12:45. The last few days have been relatively cool, and I assumed this one would follow suit. I was wrong. A little over halfway through my run I was sticky, light-headed, and miserable and decided to call it a day early.

Even if it had been a 65-degree day, however, I don't think I'd have wanted to go barreling through the park - there was way too much to see. I stopped for a few minutes to listen to a guy with a guitar perform for a small crowd, and passed by two drumming circles several minutes later. I watched three men practicing capoeira, a strange combination of martial arts and dance, under a tree. Then I ran by an impossibly long line of people hoping to land tickets to tonight's Shakespeare in the Park performance, which are free if you are willing to get there early enough and wait long enough. I listened to a violin and harp duet near the south end of the park, which was really lovely, and then stopped by the Boathouse to watch some actors in costume all holding open copies of a book called Nude Walker as though they were reading them. Every four or five minutes, they'd unfreeze and perform a brief scene, and an older woman in a Nude Walker t-shirt handed me her card and told me that they were playing the parts of characters in her new novel, which I should check out online. Closer to home, I watched a couple playing a very animated game of Uno, admired sidewalk chalk drawings done by a 2- and 4-year-old boy, and peered over the shoulder of an older man by the pond who was sketching.

There's far too much to see in Central Park on a weekend for me to stick to my training schedule. Perhaps I should use a treadmill instead.