Marc's Musings

Well, I went to NYC this weekend to see my friend Blaire. Blaire had a lot of stuff planned and we had a good time. When I arrived on Friday night, we went down to Chinatown and ate at an Italian restaurant. Not really, but we did walk past Little Italy, which, incidentally, is being slowly eaten up by Chinatown. Blaire picked the restaurant, Joe's Shanghai, which, ironically enough, I happened to eat at about five years ago while visiting my friends Mike and Hope (Mike was attending Princeton at the time). It was delicious, but packed as it was the Chinese New Year. I think that it’s now the year of the dog or donkey or something.

Anyway, on Saturday we spent most of the day running around downtown in the Greenwich Village, SoHo, NYU and East Village areas. We went to Union Square. A few days a week they have the farmer’s market and other street vendors hawking their wares. It’s an interesting place to people-watch. The best part was the protest area. There were several people proclaiming their desire for a filibuster on the Alito confirmation vote so that they won't lose their right to have an abortion. America is a great place. Only in America can you have a bunch of butt-ugly men and women fighting for their right for an abortion. From the looks of it, I don't think that the kind of relationships that those people are having could produce a pregancy, if you catch my meaning. If any of those people wind up pregnant it would be a miracle. But, I digress.

We also went to Washington Square Park and saw the arch.


As far as I know, this is based on the same arch in Paris, the Arc de Triumphe. I will now allow you some time to come up with your own French joke.

We also went to CBGBs, which was sort of a pilgrimage for me. CBGBs is an underground rock venue that has been around since the early 70s. Quite a few of the bands that made it big from the NYC area got their start at CBGBs.

By the way, CBGB stands for: Country BlueGrass Blues, which is not the music they became famous for. Go figure. The OMFUG stands for: Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers. I think that really means Music For Nerds or something.

Saturday night we went to see The Producers. It was really good. Afterwards, we walked through Times Square. That place never ceases to amaze me. I don’t think that I’ve ever been there when it wasn’t crawling with people. Of course, at that time of night, some of the people were crawling. Amazing.

On Sunday morning we went on a walk through Central Park. We passed by the Great Lawn, Belvedere Castle and the Mall and ice skating areas. There are several reservoirs and other bodies of water in the Park. Here is an amusing picture that I took next to one of them:

Yeah, it’s the dogs that are harmful to the wildlife! I don’t think I’d want to go swimming in that water anytime soon.

Down close to the ice skating area was another pond area. I saw this duck, who I named Jesus, just hanging out on the water.


A little while later, I saw him sink, so I changed his name to Peter.

After another walk through Times Square and some breakfast for lunch, it was off to the airport. It was another good trip to NYC and I'm looking forward to going back.

Uh-oh! I've decided to create my own blog! Beware, or you may drown in my stream-of-consciousness. Hopefully I will make time to post updates in a somewhat timely and periodic manner. For the time being, enjoy!