back from paris

I'm back from Paris!!

I'll be posting photos (once I find my camera cable that lets me upload photos to the computer) and entries about my trip to my travel blog.

I had a fantastic time, saw a lot, learned a little french, and ate a lot of excellent cheese. Good times.

Back to the NYC grind now ... going to get settled in, adjust to the time change, and take care of practical matters like bills, getting ready for the coming semester, and all those other tasks of daily life.

New posts soon, so check back frequently.

chapel of sacred mirrors

This past Thursday involved a trip to Alex Gray's Cosm: Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. An artist who "specializes in spiritual and psychedlic art", Gray produces intricately detailed works that focus on issues such as birth, death, and humanity. He often depicts auras in his paintings, and includes symbolism from various religious traditions in much of his art.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors was located in a slightly-hard-to-find location on 27th Street in Manhattan. (In an odd twist, the famous strip club Scores is located across the street.) An old cargo elevator is the entrance to the chapel, which is located on the 4th floor of an otherwise nondescript warehouse type building.

The entrance fee to the chapel is $5, although if you have less, that's alright. (A girl behind me got in for only $3.) You are surrounded by Alex Gray's art from the moment you walk in the doors. His work is everywhere, and with it, a very calm and cool vibe that goes nicely with the trance music playing in the background.

I spent about an hour there with friends, taking the time to examine each painting and sculpture closely. One work, called 'Caring', brought me close to tears. Another, his famous anatomically correct portrait of a couple kissing, had such an aura of love and calm around it that I was glued to the piece for a lengthy period of time.

The gallery comes in two parts. To the best of my understanding, one side is 'Cosm' which is mainly paintings, and the other side is the 'Chapel of Sacred Mirrors', which houses more sculptural work. My favorite artwork on the Chapel side was a mirror that reflected your own image back at you, with the word 'God' in the middle, right where your head should be if you are of average height. For me, being short, it floated somewhere above my forehead, but that's alright.

I got a positive feeling from the place and plan on going back again. There is also a nice gift shop, full of t-shirts, incense, books and posters. While the commercialization of Grey's work is a little bothersome and makes everything feel a little less pure, it is still nice to be able to wear or look at his art anytime you want in the form of a postcard or t-shirt.

And, in other news, I leave for Paris in less than 48 hours!!

big announcement

The BIG ANNOUNCEMENT as promised ...


I'm going to Paris!! Yes, the Paris. I'll be gone for roughly a week at the end of August. While I have been to Europe many times, I have never been to France. I am very excited about the trip and grateful for the chance to go.

New York City will just have to live without me for a few days!!

646-TRAFFIC, funk, jerks from NJ & a cheerful vagrant

Came back into the city grooving to Pure Funk 2. Traffic everywhere, people driving like maniacs (especially the ones from New Jersey), cars weaving between trucks and jeeps and vans. Watched some guy almost kill himself after suddenly deciding to switch over four lanes of traffic to make an off ramp exit. Heart started beating hard after watching the man swerve across black asphalt. He almost hit a barrier wall, and right then I almost stopped breathing. Got mad once he made the exit safely -- the idiot risked the lives of everyone around him to pull some sort of James Bond stunt.

Had the windows rolled down as I cruised along the Westside Highway in Manhattan. Funk was pumping out the window and I was bopping my head and neck like crazy. Passed the Chelsea Piers, and a vagrant was sitting on a bench outside of them. He smiled and waved at me. Guess he liked the music.

My friend, who was driving, kept cranking the volume up on the dial. A subtle increase each time, but a method I heartily approved of. Sneaky and sweet. Sneaky because he did it so slowly, and sweet because he liked the music as much as I did.

Some old white lady in the next car over (again at Chelsea Piers) gave us a condescending glance, but it turned into a smile. No one can resist the power of a goodly groove.

By the way, the greatest well-known secret for anyone driving into the City: 646-TRAFFIC. Dial it and see what happens. It's free, automated and amazing. Also, great source of unintentional humor. If you speak with any kind of accent or quietly, a creepy computer voice will demand information from you repeatedly.

Hot sauce. I'm tired. New entry coming in the next day.

Oh yeah ...

big announcement in the following post.

a tornado grows in brooklyn

It seems I picked the perfect time to be out of town. Yesterday a tornado hit south Brooklyn, the first since 1889. Apparently a huge storm passed through the area, and it turned into a small tornado that wrecked the expected damage and havoc in such an urban area. The public transportation system got royally screwed up, and there were reports of subway lines flooding from all the rain.

I have one friend who was at 'ground zero' of the storm. He reported massive winds, and described the scene as something eerie and well ... weird. The sky outside was dark (it was early morning), pieces of trash and scrap metal were getting blown about, and no one was outside on the streets, which is very unusual for Brooklyn.

Anyway, as expected, the news channels out of NYC are having a field day with the story, as are all those urban bloggers who 'survived' the tornado. Photos abound online -- simply type in 'Brooklyn tornado 2007' on google.com and about a dozen sites will pop up with photos. I'm not posting any of the photos from those sites here, because of copyright reasons. (Every photo posted here is either my own photograph I've taken, or borrowed from a royalty/copyright free website for bloggers. I ain't stupid when it comes to property usage rights!)

I'm assuming my apartment wasn't near the scene of the storm, since no one back in NYC has called to tell me "oh, by the way, your apartment was hit by a tornado ..." I suppose I should keep my fingers crossed, though.

In other news: I'm adding more labels to posts. Labels follow the end of every blog entry and you can click on a label such as 'brooklyn' or 'weather' to get every post that has been labeled in the same fashion. It's a good way of reading through entries on the same topic.

a way to kill time

I was going to post an actual blog entry, but it's 2:11am and I'm too tired to write something decent. However, I can't sleep, so I figure I might as well post something here.

I'm stupidly obsessed with the most annoying, pointless game of all time. It's free, online, and seems to mostly be in Chinese (??), but I can't stop playing

it. The entire premise of the game is to cook breakfast for impatient customers. Who knew that frying up sausages, toasting bread and boiling noodles could be so entertaining.

I'm suspicious of the high scores list, as I can never break 3,000 points and yet there's people on there who have over 100,000 ... HOW? I demand answers -- and a place on the high score list!

If you are so inclined, check it out at http://funnyflash.com/games/h.k._cafe/

Better yet, if anyone breaks 3,000 points, let me know how you did it.

Another equally idiotic game that fascinates me with how utterly nitpicky / type A / anal retentive it is:

http://maggiemarket.kizash.com/games/facial_house/

Real post coming soon!