Statue of Liberty & Customs House

New York - December 2006

I was in New York City over x-mas weekend for a quasi-family reunion. To the extent that I basically had one free day for myself, on Saturday I eschewed going to an art museum and instead took an extended walk through the lower part of Manhattan.

***

Starting out from Gramercy, I headed through the East Village, Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Italy, SoHo, and the Village, then took Broadway all the way down to Battery Park, then back up north past Ground Zero and to a family dinner at a relative's apartment in Tribeca.

***

The East Village definitely had the most independent, non-chain restaurants and bars and would be a very cool place to live I think. The most enduring image from Chinatown was a block which had a bunch of fresh fish shops, the smells accentuating the sight of a wide variety of both typical and unusual seafood for sale. Picked up a CD of lounge music at a record shop in the Village. I also saw Café Reggio's, which is referenced in the original "Shaft" movie of the early '70s (as well as "Walk to Reggio's" on the soundtrack). There were a lot of people in Battery Park, and it was very cool to see the Statue of Liberty (seeing an iconic symbol in person always is).

***

I hadn't really desired to check out Ground Zero, but since it ended up being on my route I did walk by. I could not help thinking that the giant, gaping gray hole in the ground is a mass murder site, the result of pointless acts that obliterated a symbol of New York whose absence is still acutely felt.

***

Though I wore a winter hat and cloth gloves, during the day I could get away with wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt over a short-sleeve one, as the temperature was in the 50s.

***

No trip to New York is complete without dining on a slice of pizza and getting a hot dog from a cart on the street (preferably multiple times). The slice should be plain cheese, in order to make for a level playing field in one's comparison of various slices. I had my first pizza slice of the trip at Bleeker Street Pizza in the Village (at 7^th Avenue); a definite thumbs up. The next day I had a slice at Fat Sal's on West 14^th Street, which really hit the spot and wins best slice of my visit.

Empire State Building!

Flatiron Building!

Pictures: Art Positions Exhibit - Miami Beach - December 2006 (part of Art Basel)

Art Positions consists of a series of trucking containers, in which an international blend of individual galleries respectively gets to set up its displays. Given the parameters in which one has to work (i.e. a long and narrow area), it is interesting to see the ways in which the artists make use of the space. The sand fruits below, which was my favorite exhibit, were outside.

Pictures: Miami Beach December 2005

It was a clear, windy day. The pictures of the beach were taken around 22nd Street, right around the Art Positions exhibit (pictures of which are posted above).

Wizard, RIP

L.A. Times Obit

Having never been a particularly big "Raymond" fan, I will always best remember Peter Boyle for his role as the sage elder cabbie in "Taxi Driver" (which, coincidentally, is my favorite all-time movie). Even his wisdom cannot save Travis, however, as by the time the scene occurs when they're talking outside the cafeteria (of which I could not easily find a picture online) one senses that for Travis it is already too late to change the direction in which his whole life is pointing (paraphrase). Nevertheless, the role remains classic and a talented, entertaining and engaging actor has moved on.

Consumption: New Computer III

I want to share my immense frustration about problems with the CD burning function on my iMac.

From the first time that I unsuccessfully tried to do so, I have been utterly unable to burn a CD from iTunes. I get the same failure message ("attempt to burn disc failed"), iTunes has to be closed because it is "not responding properly", and a blank CD has useless, unplayable and unremovable AIFF files on it.

Upon researching the message boards in the iTunes help section, I realized that many other people have had similar CD burning problems and that such problems have been occurring for some time now. This indicates to me that burning CDs from iTunes has been a consistent problem of which Apple has either actual or constructive knowledge.

In addition to calling customer service (who instructed me to re-run the install discs that came with the computer), I have tried all of the trouble shooting tips discussed in the help section dealing with CD burning problems, all to no avail.

The primary reasons I got an iMac were to avoid internet-related problems found on PCs and for the user-friendly multi-media features that Apple focuses on in its marketing and advertising campaigns. While the internet is working great, I am thoroughly disappointed in iTunes’ failure to properly burn a CD. It is apparent that there is some flaw in iTunes such that, for many people, it is incapable of burning a CD. More egregiously, I am disturbed that Apple appears to have knowledge of this problem yet has allowed it to continue while still selling computers on which this problem persists.

While I have not yet taken the machine into the store, I have a feeling that this problem will persist and, moreover, am so annoyed that something I just bought will likely have to be sent in to the shop (which, I similarly fear, will result in further futility). Regardless as to whether it's a software or hardware problem, the right kind of blank CD is being used (the ones I have tried worked fine on my old laptop PC) or if the issue is ever solved, the harm has been done. For a product which prides itself on being easy to use right out of the box, its failure to burn even one CD is, as political leaders sometimes like to say, "disappointing."

NY Post: BIMBO SUMMIT