Lunch

Lunch outside the Dancing Crane Cafe. The Cafe was full so we had to eat outside. Alex, the sloppy eater.

Bronx Zoo

All superheroes gather to have a picture taken.

Egg Hunt At Bronx Zoo

It's good to be a child. Finding an Easter Egg could be so much fun and all.

Bronx Zoo

Egg Hunt.

It was unbelievably cold.

At the Met

This is the only section that captures their attention. All the knights, swords, and armors.

At the Met Cafeteria

Eating, best activity of the day.

The food is good but seriously expensive. The children have kid's meal, i.e. hot dog, French fries and apple juice. Jin has some chicken wrap and I have an chicken entree with grilled potatoes and tomatoes and some asparagus on the side and a soda. And the bill comes to a whopping $40.

I was supposed to have free company pass. But man, the cashier told me my company just dropped the corporate sponsorship. Anyway, the admission is supposed to be a recommended fee. As a matter of principle, I never pay the recommended admission fee. I believe it's $20 per adult. I will let the upper west side or east side well-heeled folks and the tourists pay full price. Me, no, never.

At the Met

Checking out Van Gogh.

Alex found out Mr. Van Gogh only lived to 37 years old. Alex was a bit shocked because his semi-illiterate Dad once told him Van Gogh probably died in his early 40s. I wasn't sure. But I didn't sugar coat what happened to Van Gogh. He was an absolute failure when he was alive. He never sold one painting or drawing when he was alive (OKAY, maybe one or two but that's about it).

The average American lives to 77 years old, give or take a few years I guess. And the average man dies earlier than the average woman.

Met

Kids don't care about Monet.

Of Sex, Love, Money and Happiness

Vincent told me the below quote by James A. Baldwin

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

I think Iggy Pop once said sex is more objective. You always know if you have good sex or not, unlike love which is more subjective and may change over time. The same is also true between money and happiness. Money is more objective, you always know how much money you have. Happiness is more subjective and fleeting. If you can't have love and happiness, sex and money aren't all that bad a substitute.

Movie Review Double Feature

This also falls under old video review by yours truly.

Before there was Infernal Affairs, there was City on Fire.

City on Fire or Lung fu fong wan (1987) starring Chow Yun Fat as Ko Chow, and Danny Lee as Ah Fu and directed by Ringo Lam. I remember first seeing it in a movie house in Manhattan Chinatown in probably 1987 when human beings didn't exist and dinosaurs roamed the Earth...but that was another story.

I was immensely impressed by the movie. The direction, the story and the acting in general. I had to say, even by today's standard, Chow's on screen wardrobe was pretty impressive. The parka, the boots, and very narrow tie and even a bow, I mean it's over the top and if anybody, it would be Chow who could pull off that overall look.

City on Fire probably set the bar for all future undercover police stories, by and large.

******

Fast forward to 2003, we had this crap called Heroic Duo or Shuang xiong (2003), starring Leon Lai as Jack Lai, Ekin Cheng as Ken. Jack was a MIT educated hypnotist who of course didn't fail to put the audience to sleep with his wooden performance through out the entire movie. Jack was in jail for a murder. And now Inspector Ken has to enlist Jack's help to solve another case involving hypnotics. The scene where they tried to capture "mindhunter," Jack's alleged hypnotic master was a scene from Se7en, only minus the rain. The scene when Jack and Ken first met, the scene the cops are waiting for the elevator to come down remind me The Silence of the Lambs. The plot starts out mildly interesting but as it progresses it becomes more retarded and of course the final show down was just like 007 with tortured chamber and plenty of explosions.

To make matter worse, Ekin Cheng's Ken and his on screen love interest, Brenda, another cop, played by Kar Yan Lam, were like a three way competition to see who could give the most wooden performance through out. And I think, the first place is a tie between Leon Lai and Kar Yan Lam and the runner up is Ekin Cheng who has the advantage of a more action oriented role to spice up the role just a tad than the other two.

Overall the movie is silly but not funny.

Apple News

Apple iTunes offers DRM-free music downloads from EMI catalogs. Or so I heard. In the sea of piracy and places where there is no law, this is not very germane.

Apple offers its cheese grater with 8-core processors. Honestly, I don't know what it means anymore. The Mac Pro now has the power to run the entire world and probably beyond, that must be it.

Look like there are more good news and product roll outs as Winter turns to Spring. Ah Spring, the season of hope and rebirth.

Straight from the horse's mouth.

LIFE

Time Inc. has taken away the life support from LIFE. Like its other flagship magazine, Time, nobody is reading LIFE magazine anymore (unless you count Vincent, relics from the 60s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_magazine

Source.

1966: David Eyre's Pancake

This is a recipe taken from The New York Times Magazine artcle entitled Recipe Redux by Amanda Hesser on March 25, 2007.
According to the author, this recipe is from David Eyre who supposedly got it from "St. Francis Hotel Cookbook" published in 1919.

1966: David Eyre's Pancake
This recipe appeared in a Times article by Craig Claiborne

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons button (or olive oil and less butter to cut down on cholesterol)
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

optional:
Juice of half a lemon
Pinch of ground nutmeg, salt and cinnamon
Blackberries (I added some to the batter) and Strawberries (added some when serving)
Fig or blackberry jam, pear butter of any kind of marmalade, for serving

PROCEDURE:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
2. Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add flour, milk, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and lightly beat until blended but still slightly lumpy. Don't over mix.
3. Melt butter in a 12-inch or 10.25-inch (pictured above) cast iron pan. Heat until hot but not burnt, pour in the batter. (I added some blackberries as well.) Transfer pan into oven, bake until pancake billow on the edges and golden brown, about 15 minutes.
4. Working quickly, remove the pan from the oven and using a fine-meshed sieve, sprinkle with the confectioners' sugar. Return to the oven for one to two minutes more. Sprinkle with lemon juice and serve with jam, pear butter or marmalade.

After reading it, I did this pancake twice, the first time during lunch hour and the second time (pictured above) during breakfast time. The children loved it.

Lunch at Branzini

The food is good but expensive

Drinks:-
Corona $6
Merlot x 2 $9=$18
Menebrea x 2 $7=$14

Appetizers:-
Sardines $10
Chicken/Sausage with Broccoli Rabe $14
Arugula Pear Salad $10
Calamari $10

Main Course:-
Hanger Steak $24
Salmon $23
24 Pasta Special $24
Cavatelli $19

The service was so so, it wasn't horrible but it wasn't good or friendly either. For this kind of price, I would expect very good professional service, sadly our waiter Daniel was barely interested in us. Anyway, the food was agreeably good, just don't expect any big portion though.

A total of $172 + tax $14.40 and service $30.96, a Grand total of $217.36

Read what others said.

Branzini is located at Madison and 41st St, on the first floor of The Library Hotel, a charmingly cozy little hotel in midtown.

No Impact Man

Photo credit, Nicole Bengiveno for The New York Times.

Today, the New York Times brought you the No Impact Family in lower Manhattan.

The No Impact Family is a new breed of post-Gore Environmentalists with a healthy disdain for global warming, consumerism and toilet paper. When I read that toilet paper bit, I know they are serious as their clean ass is on the line.

The No Impact Man, like most other men, has a blog, and unlike most other men, has a book deal and documentary to chronicle his No Impact living.

The Year Without Toilet Paper by Penelope Green

No Impact Man Blog.

YouTube Wednesday

If I were to write any better, perhaps I would at least be your average blogger who whines and bitches his life and occasionally comes up with some mildly interesting stuff, but I simply couldn't. So I present you with YouTube Wednesday....



Hillary Clinton 1984 Video From YouTube

It's Spring Time Now

It's officially Spring time now. Tomorrow the temperature is going to be in the 40s. So that's not too bad.

Fortran Developer Dies

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer Dies.

But Fortran will live on, like it always does since 1954.

More Fortran from wikipedia.

Passive Voice

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is an advanced practitioner of the passive voice. He said, "Mistakes were made." He didn't say he or who made the mistakes, it's just mistakes were made.
Now the democrats controlled Congress is turning up the heat for his resignation. Bush finally stepped in and stood behind him to give support... You know you got to stand behind the man first before pushing him down the subway track (I think Jay Leno said that, or David Letterman.)

A Day In The Park

FARGO, 2007

Picture of the Month, almost Henri Cartier-Bressonesque .... (just don't throw up now)