Remains of a weekend

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I haven't set up my television here in NYC, and before that I was traveling for months so I had just sporadic access to a television. I haven't missed it nearly as much as I thought. It's given me time to read and enjoy life outside my apartment. I'm sick of reality television, have no need for CSI: Minneapolis ("Hmm, I think Steve Buscemi died when his partner axed him in the head and put him through the wood chipper. Yaaaa, I do."), and any television show I really want to watch can usually found on BitTorrent. For example, the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire as he bitch-slapped Tucker Carlson. Deeply, deeply satisfying. I can't stand Tucker Carlson. What a buffoon. If you don't know how to use BitTorrent, you can see the clip just fine here at iFilm. Could Jon Stewart be any more golden right now? I walked by the Union Square Barnes and Noble when he was there for his book signing, and by the looks of the drooling women in line, you'd think Jude Law or Brad Pitt was there to sign a swimsuit calendar.
Of course, I must have my television set up by this Thursday, when The Office Christmas Specials (part 1, part 2) air in the U.S. on BBC America. I tried to find it on DVD in London this summer, but all I could turn up was pity from Londoners who tsk tsk'd as they revelled in recounting the rapture of humor the special had bestowed upon them. The DVDs? Release in the UK Oct. 25. If you haven't seen the show yet, I either pity or envy you. And who the hell are you and where have you been living?! The show has no laugh track, because you'll provide one. But don't take my word for it. The New Yorker calls it perfect.
Malcolm Gladwell writes about the high cost of prescription drugs with his usual (i.e., unusual) insight.
Wal-Mart.com, of all sites, has audio clips of the Friday Night Lights soundtrack. I'm just about over my Friday Night Lights kick. After watching the movie I bought the soundtrack and inhaled the book (recommended and recommended, respectively). The music has been a nice change of pace from the usual stuff in my "Running" playlist in my iPod, all of which I've heard about eighty times by now.
The baseball stadium in Houston is a joke. People are hitting pop flies out of the stadium in left field for home runs, and that hill with the pole in it in center field is ludicrous. What an atrocious baseball playing field (I've never seen the exterior, but it seems fine). The fact that all baseball stadiums have different dimensions in the outfield used to never bother me, but if they standardize the dimensions of all playing areas of all MLB stadiums, allowing architects to customize all other aspects and dimensions of the stadium, I'd have no objections. Imagine one NBA basketball court having baskets nine feet high instead of ten, or a three point line that was shorter than in other stadiums.
Games 3 and 4 of the ALCS were brutal. Each game lasted about two days. Alan, Sharon, and I rented a movie, started watching when game 3 started, and when the two hour movie finished that game was in the fourth inning. I don't know how anyone who's not a Yankees or Red Sox fan could stay awake. I remain steadfast in my hope that MLB will speed up the games. If you adjust your batting glove and then stand there to take a pitch, why do you need to step out and adjust it again? Is the velcro defective?
I met James, Angela, some of their college friends, Alan, and Sharon for lunch at Carnegie Deli today. The Carnegie sandwiches are MASSIVE. RIDICULOUS. I had a reuben, their specialty, and it was actually just a mountain of pastrami covered by several layers of cheese. It looked like an elementary school model of Mt. St. Helens erupting cheese. I finished about a quarter of it and will nibble on the remains for the rest of the week. Carnegie Deli is a mecca for pastrami and corned beef lovers.
I didn't miss my car until I saw this promotional clip for the new BMW M5. Sweet mother of...sometimes, late at night, when the subway seems like it will never arrive, wouldn't you just like to hop into something like this and just play Pole Position with the cabs.
NYC's arts lineup is overwhelming. Everyday I find at least five things I'm dying to go see. Monday night (oh, that would be tonight) Ricky Gervais is speaking at the Museum of Television and Radio before a screening of The Office Christmas Special. I'd kill to see Julie Taymor's production of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte) at the Met. Alex Ross raves about it. What stops me is the memory of my first NYC credit card bill. Upon opening it and reading the balance, I screamed, dropped the bill, my eyes rolled up into my head, and I fainted theatrically, like a swooning movie diva.
The weekend ended with puppet entertainment. No, not the marionettes of Team America World Police, but the puppets of Avenue Q, the much acclaimed musical that won the Tony for best musical in 2003. I am not a huge musical fan, but I enjoyed this one for not taking itself so seriously. It offers quite a contrast to the melodrama of most musicals and seems a descendant of the Rent lineage of musicals, one that's sadly sparse. The show features a cast of puppets and people who live in a rundown neighborhood in Manhattan as they sing about life and its problems. But these are HBO-class puppets, not Sesame Street or Jim Henson muppets (even though some of the characters really resemble Ernie and the cookie monster), so they swear, drink, and have sex. As Phil said at intermission, it might not a musical you'd be comfortable seeing with your parents. The puppets are held by actors who stand alongside them as puppeteers, singing, with their hands clearly inserted up into the puppets or waving their arms around. It's jarring for just the first few seconds, but then, the rest of the time, as the cast sings songs like "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" or "The Internet is for Porn" or "Schadenfreude", you realize it all feels on some level like a clever deconstruction of the musical as an art form. Would Kermit and Miss Piggy have grown up to be a dysfunctional married couple? Would Bert have come out of the closet to confess his love for Ernie? Would Big Bird be surfing porn on the Internet? I'm of the generation that wouldn't find those stories surprising at all, and I'm glad some musicals have caught up.

Game Two

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Alan and I took the express 4 up to 161 St./Yankee Stadium last night for game 2 of the ALCS. This time I sat in the center field bleachers instead of right field.

I realized what it is I like about Bob Shepperd's voice (he's the public address announcer at Yankee Stadium): he sounds like he's being piped in direct from the 1930's, through a hole in the space time continuum. Before the game started, Alan and I watched some Red Sox take batting practice. At one point, Pedro Martinez came to the outfield to play long toss to stretch out his arm. Of course, the "Who's your daddy?" chants began immediately.
Why he made that daddy remark I'll never know. He claimed after the game that he didn't regret what he said, but if he doesn't, Red Sox fans and his teammates will. You just can't give the most obnoxious, arrogant baseball fans in the country ammunition. He'll be hearing that chant for the rest of his career at Yankees Stadium, unless, of course, he joins the Yankees this offseason. The Yankees would probably overpay for him, and he's clearly on the downhill side of his career, but still, if you're the Red Sox, do you want to see Pedro in pinstripes? It would be an echo of too many painful memories, and it would just tickle Yankees fans to death.
[Note: the chanting of "Hoosier Daddy" at Bobby Knight when he was still head coach at Indiana remains the most original usage of the phrase]
When the game started, I realized that roll call only occurs from the right field bleachers. Inevitably, we were seated near a completely inebriated Yankees fan who was teetering all over the place. He kept falling into me, and every time he went to buy another beer with his buddy I hoped he'd pass out somewhere and not return. And of course, we had the alpha-obnoxious Yankees fan running up and down our aisle, cursing out anyone who wouldn't stand up and scream along with him. There seems to be one in every bleacher section. He was dripping with sweat, his face red, his voice nearly hoarse. He kept apologizing to a young boy of eight or nine years old everytime he dropped another f-bomb. What a f***.
Most of you know how the game went by now. In the bottom of the first, Pedro walked Jeter on 4 pitches, hit A-Rod, and then gave up line drive single to Sheffield to give the Yanks a quick 1-0 lead. Alan and I were looking at the stadium radar gun, and Pedro was hitting mid-90's with his fastball. He looked to have decent velocity and stuff, certainly better than the last time I saw him here, when he got shelled, but his command was just a bit off. A few non-strike calls here and there hurt him.
One thing I did like about Shea Stadium which I remembered last night was that they post not just the velocity of each pitch but what type of pitch it was. How they figure that out I have no idea, but they do. Most pitches you can identify by the velocity and the path it takes (fastball, curve, slider, changeup, and split are easy to identify). However, for one pitch at Shea the board displayed "cutting fastball." Huh? Amazing, to think that it's someone's job to sit there all game and press a button to display the pitch type. At the Yankees game, from where I was sitting, I had some difficulty identifying between some of Pedro's changeups and curves. We were just a bit too far away for me to see the pitch path clearly.
A side observation: MLB needs to speed up games. I know they tried, a few years ago, but they failed. Umpires at my community softball game do a better job of keeping games going. Batters step out after every pitch to unstrap and restrap their batting gloves, tap their feet, take practice swings. C'mon. Batters shouldn't get to call time or to step out of the box after each pitch. That should be a rule. MLB also doesn't need two minutes between innings. Most pitchers ready after just a couple warm-up pitches. There should be a rule banning the fake pickoff throw to third and then to first. Pedro did that several times. Has that play ever worked? They should just make that a balk.
Meanwhile, the magic pixie dust they sprinkle on players when they join the Yankees to revive retreads was working as Jon Lieber was mowing down the Red Sox, and Olerud hit a go-ahead two-run homer off Pedro in the sixth. Lieber has a nasty slider. It's especially effective against right-handers. Whenever it was 0-2 on a batter, I'd look at Alan and say "slider." If he didn't get the strikeout with it, I'd say "slider" again. The Red Sox had to know it was coming, and they still couldn't lay off of it.
Teams with two million or so lying around can do worse than invest in a pitcher who's coming off of Tommy John surgery. Look at A.J. Burnett, Lieber, Kerry Wood, Ryan Dempster, John Smoltz, Matt Morris, Tom Gordon, Eric Gagne, and Mariano Rivera. It's as commonplace in baseball now as ACL reconstructions in basketball and football. Someday we're going to see a mediocre pitcher undergo pre-emptive Tommy John surgery just to see if it adds some velocity and stability.
Are there a pair of weaker center-field arms than Damon and Bernie? Watching Bernie warmup before innings is painful. He has a strange hitch in his throwing motion. Damon's arm is just plain weak.
They flashed a picture of Jack Nicholson up on the scoreboard at one point. Jack's a Yankees fan? He roots for the most hated basketball team in the country and now the most hated baseball team as well? The next time I watch Karate Kid I half expect to see Jack sitting ring-side, sharing laughs with the Cobra Kai Sensei and cheering on Johnny as he take out opponent's legs.
Gary Sheffield scared the crap out of me everytime he was at bat against the Cubs in last year's NLDS, and he's still imposing in the box with that menacing way he waves the bat around as if to say, "This thing is like a toothpick in my hands it's so light." Baseball needs to do something about batters standing on top of the plate, though. The rules are just stacked against pitchers. It's nearly impossible to throw inside anymore. You either end up hitting the batter, whereupon he either takes first or yells at you and elicits a warning from the umpire, or you hit the inside corner but the batter jumps out of the way, making the ball appear inside, and it's called a ball. They should move the batter box away from the plate a bit, maybe two to three inches. Jeter, A-Rod, and Sheffield were right on top of the plate, and Pedro couldn't drive them off of it.
Against the Yankees in the playoffs, you have seven innings to make some noise. Otherwise, out beyond the center field wall, an unnatural force named Mo begins to stir...

I imagine Mariano Rivera lounging around during games like Brad Pitt's Achilles in Troy, dozing on a couple of furs with a couple naked women, when the bullpen coach comes running in.
"Mo, Joe needs you."
Rivera looks up, somewhat groggy. "Have them lay out my uniform, shoes, and glove. In the meantime, two hot towels and my razor, please."

And then Mo comes trotting out to Enter Sandman, the entire stadium starts rocking, because it's easy to be an arrogant, cocky Yankees fan when Mo comes in to clean up the mess. He comes in, and like Achilles with that jumping-shoulder-stab move, wields his cut fastball like the sickle of the Grim Reaper, not just handcuffing batters but literally boring through the handles of left-handers bats, leaving the debris of exploded bats lying all over the grass in front of home plate.
Now comes news that Schilling can't start Game Five. If the Yankees play the Cubs' arch nemeses the Cardinals in the World Series, I'm not sure who I could root for.

Review: House of Flying Daggers

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I saw a midnight screening of House of Flying Daggers at the New York Film Festival Saturday night. While walking into the theater, I saw a pseudo-red-carpet alley being formed by throngs of people. I went over to see what the commotion was about, thinking that there was no way it could be...and it was. Zhang Ziyi. She is stunning. Some people never lose the skin they had as a baby. I had an urge to reach out just to run my fingers across her cheeks, but then I remembered that I'd probably get tackled and beaten by a few aspiring Vin Diesels, and I still did want to see the movie.
Director Zhang Yimou also walked in. Both of them received a Cannes-lite reception. Inside, Zhang spoke a few phrases which were translated into English. He mentioned that he was almost too intimidated to attempt a bamboo forest fight scene after Ang Lee's success with the same in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but that he was pleased to have found a unique way to shoot it which he hoped we'd enjoy. Zhang Ziyi came out to the crowd's delight and said in shy, halting English, "Thank you for coming. Please enjoy the movie."
I've never seen a movie at Alice Tully Hall before, and especially since my seats were in the back row, I wasn't too hopeful about the acoustics and picture. I was wrong. As the picture came on screen, a huge drum sounded, and it was LOUD. No surround sound, but the acoustic picture in the front half of the theater was distinct and LOUD. I was so pleased, because as the movie progressed, I realized that the sound design and soundtrack of the movie are critical to its effect. The sound of drums shaking the air, the whisper of silk fabric sssssliding across itself, the whistling of (flying) daggers slicing through the air, of leaves rustling as horses or soldiers rush past...all of them came through crystal clear.
As with Hero and Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang favors lush, saturated color palettes. The scenery, shot in parts of the Ukraine and China, is gorgeous, and the actors outfits are often coordinated to the environment. When Zhang Ziyi dances at a brothel, her blue dress complements the hall decor. When she's running through an autumn forest, she's dressed in muted navy and gold, and near movie's end, when she's in a forest of bamboo and leaves, her spring green robe blends in such that an interior designer would be proud. Those ancient Chinese had great fashion sense. The finale brings together all the color palettes from the movie and highlights them against the neutral backdrop of a white snow-covered landscape.
The House of Flying Daggers is a clandestine rebel group that steals from the rich, gives to the poor, and combats the waning Tang Dynasty government. Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kanehiro) are two soldiers in the General's Army, given the assignment of capturing the new leader of the House of Flying Daggers in ten days. Jin, a ladies man, is sent undercover to the Peony Pavilion, a brothel, to investigate and win the heart of a new blind dancer, Mei (Zhang Ziyi), rumored to be a member of the House of Flying Daggers.
Anyone who's seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero or any of the classic wuxia movies will realize that to summarize any more of the plot would be difficult. Wuxia movies always involve complex, labrynthine plots full of double crosses and shifting loyalties. Whereas the characters, love stories and, combat in Hero felt so ethereal and mythic and pure as to be constricting and suffocating, HOFD contains more humor and humanity. Jin and Mei, both played by real life heartthrobs, flirt and laugh, a refreshing change from the formal, muted romances between Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in Hero. The scale of the story also stays at an individual level, focusing on Jin, Mei, and Leo, instead of rising to the level of a national epic.
The combat is somewhere between that of a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where characters could fly, and a Bruce Lee movie, no wires required. The warriors in HOFD can certainly leap in a manner that defies physics, but not so much that they seem superhuman. In Manhattan, they'd still have to take the subway to get from downtown up uptown. More importantly, the combat has force and impact. Characters bleed and sweat and stumble in the leaves and snow. Not that there's any shortage of the balletic. As in CTHD, there are battles set at treetop level in a forest, and a fight that soars up and down stalks of bamboo. Yimou uses a combination of special effects shots and wire work to achieve some lyric shots. Overhead shots frame Mei's acrobatic backflips, and the bullet-cam shots so popular with John Woo allow the camera to circle and follow daggers and arrows as they rip through forests and over fields of wildflowers, traveling impossible distances to slice and stab their targets (Jin is Aragorn with the sword, Legolas with the bow and arrow). It's technically ravishing.
The acting and dialogue are true to the wuxia tradition which is both a strength and a limitation. Wuxia movies won't ever provide the type of dialogue or elicit the type of acting that wins Oscars. It takes a game actor to keep a straight face pronouncing some of this dialogue, and it's even more difficult for the audience to keep a straight face listening to much of it (the subtitling was actually quite good, even if it failed to convey bits of nuance here and there). Some people find the chivalry and heroism of wuxia movies touching, and others hokey. HOFD is not as geniunely moving as the pictures Yimou made with Gong Li, but the emotional hooks dig deeper than those of the typical swordplay movie. At the very least, Lau, Kanehiro, and Zhang are a handsome group, even when their faces are frozen in the wuxia tragic mask--expressionless, stoic, as a tear runs down one's cheek to hang for dear life at the corner of one's chin.
[The movie was dedicated to the memory of Anita Mui, who died from cervical cancer during filming. Zhang rewrote the script to remove her character. Kathleen Battle sings the theme song.]


Timing is everything

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I've been spending my time between the West Coast and New York serendipitously. I left NYC during the RNC and enjoyed some gorgeous sunshine driving from Seattle down the West coast to Los Angeles. Then I landed back in NYC in time for the first blushes of autumn. Now I've landed back in Seattle just as tropical depression Jeanne wreaks its final fury on NYC before sailing off into the Atlantic
I found it a strange coincidence that this Gothamist post was titled "You Are Not Living In Seattle". As if addressed to me. Yes, I don't live in Seattle anymore, but for a few days, I can pretend as if I still do. And yes, Seattle has less avg. annual rainfall than NYC.

You bleeping bleeper! Bleep bleep!

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Sunday, I visited Yankee Stadium for the first time to catch the rubber game of the Yankees-Red Sox series. My seat was in the right field bleachers, a few rows down from the DiamondVision scoreboard.
Before the game started, I took in the view of the stadium. It didn't impress me. The history of great players and great games played there is undeniable, but the actual structure itself is non-descript and rather dumpy. It lacks the distinguishing visual features of other stadiums of seniority like Wrigley Field (ivy-covered outfield walls, manual scoreboard, views of Lake Michigan and buildings outside the outfield walls) or Fenway Park (the Green Monster). The thing I do like about Yankees Stadium is the P.A. announcer. The deadpan delivery (a refreshing contrast from the biased, Michael-Buffer-like grandstanding of most home team introductions) and the acoustic texture of his voice as heard through the old-school speaker system gave me goosebumps. I'm not sure how to describe it without a sound clip, but every name he uttered sounded like a legend, even Miguel Cairo.
The best bleacher seats in sports are those that attract the die-hard, loud-mouthed fans. The ones at Wrigley Field certainly do, and by the end of the Yankees game, I had no doubt that the ones at Yankee Stadium did as well. Bleacher seats are the modern day equivalent of the standing-room only cheap seats at the Globe Theatre back when a Shakespeare play was mass entertainment, except nowadays the rabble are further from the stage than the well-to-dos. These are the fans that will throw back a home run ball if it's hit by an opposing player, assuming they're sober enough to toss it in the right direction.
And of course, they also taunt everyone, from opposing players to opposing fans. I wasn't surprised to hear profanity-laced trash talk from the fans around me, but the sustained viciousness impressed me.
Any Red Sox fan brave enough to venture into the bleachers was serenaded by a rhythmic chant of "ass...hole...ass...hole" and pointed out by a forest of jabbing index fingers, moving in time to the chanting. A few younger boys, Red Sox fans, had their Red Sox t-shirts turned inside out. I suspect their mothers forced them to do so out of fear for their lives.
In the top of the first inning, after the Yankees took the field, the bleachers conducted roll call. They started by chanting Ber-nie, Ber-nie, Ber-nie, until Bernie Williams acknowledged them with a wave of his glove. Then they moved to Mat-su-i, Mat-su-i, and then Sheff, Ole-rud, Cai-ro, Je-ter, and A-Rod. No roll call for Mussina and Posada, busy pitching and catching. I hadn't seen roll call performed at a baseball game like that before, and it was impressive. It offered a sense of camaraderie between the right field bleachers and the players, even if most of them were purchased as free agents like so many bobble-heads off of eBay.
In the bottom of the first, the bleacher fans turned from love to hate, and the target of nearly all their ire was center fielder Johnny Damon, who hasn't cut his hair since the Carter administration. I'm not sure what to call his coiff--a caveman mullet? His do and the varied hirsuteness of his teammates were a great affront to Yankees fans, perhaps in deference to the strict grooming rules passed down from Steinbrenner.
Some of the chants directed at Damon (these choruses were chanted to the "Let's go defense" cadence, i.e., [chorus in four beats], clap clap clap-clap-clap, repeat):
You're a wookie
Jesus Damon
Get a haircut
You're a homo
Take a shower
You're a [two syllable expletive]
[expletive] [expletive] [expletive] [expletive]
One Red Sox fan sitting in front of me had on a Red Sox cap, white and red and navy blue Red Sox t-shirt, and dark, thick-rimmed glasses. A Yankees fan walking up the aisle saw him and started shouting "Where's Waldo? Where's Waldo?" Then, pointing at the Red Sox fan in glasses, "Here's Waldo!"
In the sixth inning, between innings, the Village People's YMCA played. Yankees fans sought out all the Red Sox fans and pointed at them while altering the chorus: "Whyyyy are you gay?"
By the seventh-inning stretch, when the famed Irish tenor (so famous I've forgotten his name; if he's so famous shouldn't he have another gig somewhere else?) popped out to sing God Bless America, the game was out of reach. Pedro Martinez got knocked around pretty good by the Yankees. Pedro has lost a few mph off of his fastball (reducing the velocity differential and effectiveness of his nasty changeup) and some bite off of his curveball. He's still good, but he's no longer dominant. The score was 8-1 by now, Pedro had stalked off to the showers to a derisive chorus of PEEE-DROOO, and Yankees fans were preening in triumph.
One particularly obnoxious Yankees fan, a young punk with a bandana on his head, was nearly frothing at the mouth. He found one mild-mannered Red Sox fan and stood over him, screaming, "You're an asshole! Boston sucks! Get your ass back to Boston!" Unlike some other Yankees fans, Punk Yankee Fan lacked the gift of wit or creativity, so that was all he could muster, over and over. The Red Sox fan, who looked like a skinnier version of Alan Cummings, was a bit shell-shocked, so stunned he made the mistake of forgetting to remove his cap during God Bless America. Some Yankees fans shouted at him, "Hey asshole, remove your effing cap!" Though I doubt he was a Communist, Alan-Cummmings-Lite refused to acknowledge requests uttered with such disrespect, even if it offended the crowd's sense of patriotism.
After the seventh inning stretch was over, Punk Yankee Fan went over to Alan-Cummings-Lite and knocked his Red Sox cap off and kicked it down the aisle. The two of them started shoving each other and had to be separated.
The Yankees won, increasing their AL East lead to 4 1/2 games, and everyone piled back on the uptown 4. Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend bringing young children to the Yankees bleachers for games against the Red Sox, even if those are the cheap seats. The threat of collateral damage is just too great.
Next week they repeat a 3 game series, but this time in Boston. I wish I could be there to see how Yankees fans are received in the bleachers at Fenway, though I suspect the reciprocity principle holds true here.

A New York minute

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I haven't had Internet access since my arrival in NYC, thus the blackout on my site. It will likely continue for another week or two as I get settled.
My first night, I arrived to a dark, empty apartment. I had electricity but no lights. The screen of my laptop wasn't enough to illuminate much more than my face, and I also lacked some basic living essentials, like toilet paper and somewhere to sleep. Thank goodness for family. I headed over to James and Angela's right away, as much for the welcome feeling of friendly faces as for a supply run. Angela loaded me up with an air mattress, sheets, a towel, toilet paper, and a dose of goodwill. I lingered there perhaps longer than usual, drawn in by the presence of furniture, lighting, and the lived-in warmth of their apartment.
Sharon and Alan have also offered a ton of support. They call just about once a day to see what I'm up to and to make sure I'm not spending all my time in an empty apartment. Several times, I've gone over to their place for dinner, and they often have leftovers I can polish off. I'm so grateful to have family here to soften my landing.
My primary focus right now is furniture hunting. I need a bed, a sofa, a dresser, and some standing closets, among other things. I happen to live in a furniture district of sorts, though it's not the type of furniture any normal humans can afford. The first store I visited was Ligne Roset, just because it happened to be across the street from me. Gorgeous furniture, horrific prices. A sectional I admired cost $8,695. I may have to resort to catalog shopping yet again.
The morning after my arrival, I locked myself out of my apartment. Smooth.
Most of my time has actually been spent at Flushing Meadows, watching the U.S. Open. I watched the women and men's semis and finals on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Mostly I wanted to see Roger Federer play, and I got my wish. Having watched him destroy Tim Henman and Lleyton Hewitt, I can confirm what the tennis cognoscenti have been saying: he is the best tennis player of all time (though of course I'm discounting longevity).
I've seen Sampras, Agassi, Lendl, Edberg, Becker, and Wilander play, all in their prime, and none of them matched the quality of tennis I saw from Federer this weekend. He has no significant weaknesses and a long list of strengths: the best forehand I've ever seen, a powerful and accurate serve, a beautiful and dangerous one-handed backhand, incredible court movement, mechanically solid volleys, off-the-charts tennis smarts and anticipation, and the calm and cool of a contract killer. All this, and he doesn't even have a coach. I've seen him hit a variety of full-swing, half volley forehands on the move that are just absurd.
Hewitt was on a huge roll coming into the finals, and Federer made him look like a college player. I think Hewitt won all of five points in the first set. In fact, the match was a bagel sandwich: 6-0, 7-6, 6-0. Federer's play that weekend has been the highlight of my stay.
I'm trying to take advantage of the city's cultural wealth. I grabbed a few tickets for the NY Film Festival in October, though many shows sold out instantly. I have tickets to see Avenue Q and I'm My Own Wife and the opening night preview of Reckless starring Mary Louise Parker. And this weekend, if a few things fall into place, maybe I'll take in a Yankees Red Sox game.
Okay, my one-hour Starbucks wi-fi pass is running out. Back out into the NY night, where everyone's still awake.

Eat to run, or run to eat

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Marathon training continues, invigorated by an infusion of new routes thanks to Manhattan. I've jogged on the trail that runs along the east side of Manhattan (noisy and loud as it shoulders the FDR), along the west edge of Manhattan (lots of eye candy with the Hudson River to the west and the city skyline to the east), and of course Central Park (plenty of route permutations through its dense network of trails, and it contains the only soft surface I've found thus far in the 1.5 mile loop around Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir).
This marathon training is turning out to be useful, because without it I would've gained ten pounds in my one and a half weeks here. Manhattan is an embarrassment of riches for foodies. In just a few meals out, I've had insanely good sushi (Bond Street), delicious authentic Korean (Kang Suh), inspired American (Gotham Bar and Grill), cheap Chinese comfort food (Sammy's Noodle Shop), and satisfying wurst and corn fries (Mandler's Original Sausage Co.). I've run by at least a dozen other places I'm dying to try, and that's just to add to the list of twenty five or so places I've been told I must try. I could live here for the rest of my life and still be singing the same tune.
That pleases me.

Mission accomplished

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I finally found an apartment in NYC. It's a loft-style apartment on the second floor of an old building, and the windows overlook Park Ave. I don't adore it, but then I realized that no apartment in NYC satisfies anyone's every wish, and in that way, the city equalizes everyone, rich and poor.
The location is extremely convenient. I'll be living in the Flatiron district, named for the famous Flatiron Building. I'm only a few blocks away from James and Angela and Union Square (mmmm, Union Square Cafe), and it will feel like I'm living in New York City. That feels right for my first year here.
No one enjoys apartment hunting in NYC, and now I understand why. It's a feeding frenzy driven by short supply and excess demand, and something about seeing one overhyped dump after another drains the soul. Add in a half dozen sleazy brokers calling you three times a day to hawk the next dump ("pre-war charm" is a euphemism for "old and filthy"; they claim to mean WWII but I'm suspicious). At the end of each day of apartment hunting, I'd check my wallet before taking a shower.
Brokers demand fees for soliciting and screening prospective candidates for the building owners and landlords. The fees demanded in NYC are outrageous, typically 15% of your first year's rent. In weak markets, owners/landlords will often pay the fees on behalf of the renter, but the vacancy rate in NYC is 1.7% right now, about as low as it goes in Manhattan. That means very few apartments are no-fee. Many building owners force you to go through a broker even if you contact them directly.
Thankfully, it's a process I can ignore for another year. I feel as if I've paid my membership dues for one of the most exclusive country clubs in the world.

The Day After

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I felt better at work today. Distracted perhaps.
Then I came home and went for a run. When I returned, I turned the TV back on and browsed the web for the latest news. And as various individuals began recounting their personal stories of family members they had not heard from, and cameras observed people who kept a candlelight vigil at the reflecting pool in Washington D.C., I felt a deep sorrow again.
I was glad to see images tonight of Palestinians who brought flowers and stood outside the U.S. Embassy in a show of sympathy. The images yesterday of Palestinians celebrating the attack on the U.S. were unfair, one-sided. It reminded me how easy it is to search for black and white, for a reason behind these tragedies. For now, the only absolute we know is that the people who coordinated and perpetrated these crimes against innocent people are evil. Let's hope the hand of justice comes down on them with righteous anger. Those who urge that we expel Arab Americans from our country, who desocrate mosques and vandalize Islamic offices, these idiots remind us of the ignorance that led to this attack in the first place.
We also know that hundreds of firemen gave their lives by dashing into a building they knew would likely collapse on top of them. We know, perhaps, that citizens on flight 93, knowing they were going to die, decided to attack the hijackers to prevent them from using the plane as a weapon against their fellow citizens. Jeremy Glick called his wife, who informed him that other planes had hit the World Trade Center. At that point, he dropped the phone, and when he returned, he said that the male passengers had decided to attack the hijackers to try and take back the plane.
I understand now how people felt when they volunteered for the war in 1941. The feeling of wanting to drop everything around you to go to war, to protect the ones you love. I wish I was an FBI agent, helping to hunt down these murderers.
Officials suspect two of the hijackers may have studied at this flight school in Florida.
As of 11pm today, Amazon had collected over $1.8 million from nearly 58,000 individual contributions.
Perhaps an indication of how much people are grasping for answers, the Amazon.com books topseller list and video topseller list are filled with works about Nostradamus, the prophet. When I think about how many people must be buying these books to push them so far up the top seller lists, I had to wonder. How did so many people suddenly decide that they might find insight in Nostradamus? Curious, I scoured the web.
I found that this quatrain was spreading throughout the web in the wake of the World Trade Center catastrophes:
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
two brothers torn apart by chaos,
while the fortress endures, the great leader will sucumb.
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning."
Hmm, doesn't seem like a very accurate prediction to me.
Oh, that unfortunate album cover by The Coup that I wrote about earlier? Fortunately, the album had not yet been released, and the label is going back to redo the cover.
So many moving images. At the United Nations, when a vote was taken on whether or not to support the United States in its efforts to find the terrorists responsible for this tragedy, instead of raising their hands to signify their agreement, all the delegates stood. Citizens holding flags out the window as they drive.
Everytime I see them replay the image of the airplane flying head on into the World Trade Center, I cringe. I've seen it probably nearly a hundred times by now, and it is still the most horrific thing I've ever seen. It is a thousand times more emotionally awe-inspiring than any manufactured image in a Hollywood film. I will remember it all my life.
I can't find the stomach to watch any TV, to watch a movie. I may not watch a movie for weeks. I can't fathom reading any fiction. The coverage on TV and in print and on the web has transfixed me. I can't remember a time when I watched more television--hour after hour. I feel guilty for watching the footage again and again. What would it have been like to stand there in the streets of NYC and watch the World Trade Center collapse in on itself as if the earth had swallowed it? I feel like a voyeur.
I fear that nothing our government does will provide us with that cathartic release we all yearn for. Those who most deserve to be punished died in the plane crashes. Unless countries around the world band together and force the terrorists living among them to go on the run, we may never capture all the guilty parties.
In the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani recalled a quote from Philip Roth in 1961:
"The American writer in the middle of the 20th century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one's own meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist."
Kakutani also points out some recent works of fiction, many from Hollywood, which have depicted acts of terrorism involving bombs and airplanes:
For the most part, however, large- scale terrorist plots and huge public disasters

Articles

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Lots of excellent articles at Salon.com. Here's an interview with Michele Zanini, a security expert who makes some interesting recommendations about how the U.S. should fight these terrorists.
Some books which are rising the charts at Amazon.com in the wake of this disaster:
Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center
The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism
This article at Yahoo indicates that names of suspected terrorists with ties to bin Laden were found on passenger rosters of the hijacked planes. But no name was given, just "a government source."
Another analysis of why the buildings collapsed, noting that the terrorists hit the buildings in the perfect spots. Any higher, or much lower, and the buildings would have likely survived.
In many ways, the people who built those two towers, and the buildings themselves, are heroes. The buildings held up long enough that many people could escape. This despite being hit by a massive 200 ton commercial plan. Then, when the buildings finally fell, they collapsed inward instead of toppling over onto surrounding blocks.