Pick-A-Day

June 2008
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Archives

20.00/Saturday-20.00/Sunday

The Cock: I started out last night by going to The Cock here in New York City. A couple of comparative notes—I got there at 11:15 because if I hadn’t, I would have stayed in bed and fallen asleep. 11:15 at The Cock was too early, unlike the bar I wanted to go to in Berlin, where 11:15 would have been a shade on the early side, but busy—had the bar not been, in fact, empty.

I ended up staying at The Cock until 02.00, when I left because I had to get up early Sunday for personal reasons. The Cock was, ultimately, a “sleezy” bar for New York City, but by Berlin standards it is only mildly dirty. I saw only two guys fucking in the bathroom and two guys getting head on the dance floor. It might have gotten sleezier after I left, but it didn’t feel that dirty to me—kind of an antiseptic dirty, if you know what I mean.

The DJ downstairs, in an empty space, was a stunningly handsome man. Unfortunately he looked depressed and sad spinning tunes for four people.

Blue Nine Burger: Walking home from The Cock I stopped for a midnight snack at Blue Nine Burger. Good burger. Excellent fries. Established by an IU Graduate. (Third Avenue, between 13th and 14th)

Murakami©Murakami: After reading about the Murakami exhibit in The Economist, I decided to head out to the Brooklyn Museum and see his work in person. It’s really quite interesting work with vivid colors and some vivid imagery. It’s easy to see why and how his art gets so much attention.

I did find that the copyright seemed a bit excessive to me. Perhaps artists try to assert too much control over when and how their creations are displayed.

Take Out: I headed to the movies in the afternoon. $10.50 got me a ticket for Take Out, a film about an illegal Chinese immigrant working as a food delivery boy at a Manhattan Chinese restaurant. He owes a loan shark a big sum of money and we get to watch him try and pay $800 back in one day. It’s not clear (at least to me) why somebody gave him $500, thus making him need to earn only $300 in one day, which was then cut to $150 by another generous friend.

The rest of the film is concerned with him trying to earn $150 in tips while working, a challenging feet because of customers who make you cringe. I hope I am not that offensive a customer when I order delivery. There were a few comedic highlights, like when the store’s clerk said “Fuck You” to a customer who changed his order after she had translated it into Chinese. Naturally she said it in Chinese so that the customer couldn’t understand what she was saying.

The movie, at times, seemed a bit long—the pacing could use some improvement, at least as far as I was concerned. It also had a predictable climax that I saw coming for at least half the film, although the specific implementation of the climax was not made explicitly clear until five minutes before it happened.

After the film was over, there was a brief Q&A with the film makers, Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou. One of the questions asked concerned the budget. US$3,000!

Pizza LineArtichoke: After the film, I was hungry, and I decided to go for pizza. My first night I had passed a pizza restaurant, Artichoke, with an enormous queue. Although I was hungry that night, I wasn’t willing to wait in line. Tonight I waited in line. I was in line for about 30 minutes to get in the door, and then 10 minutes inside. They make two pizzas, and I ordered a slice of each—one is an artichoke alfredo, the other is a basil and tomato creation. Both are excellent, although I think next time I would only get one slice.

The queue was self regenerating—I got in the line because it was long which prompted others to get in line because it was long. The line was never short.

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