johnrobe

Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol

Today was supposed to rain, so we decided to spend it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a bonus for us, it didn’t end up raining, so instead of taking the subway directly to the Met, we went to the southeast corner of Central Park and did a walking tour of the Upper East Side on our way to the museum.

Everything started basically next to the Apple Store in New York, which was really very impressive, as was the iPhone that I played with for 10 minutes or so. I hate all the free hype that Apple gets, but you know what? The iPhone WAS pretty damn cool. It was beautiful really, no other way to put it.

We then walked around the Upper East Side, which was pretty amazingly posh, and then went to the Met. The Met is New York’s Louvre, and although not as big is still very impressive. Given that there are bigger name museums in New York devoted to modern art (the Guggenheim, MoMa, and more) I wasn’t expecting to be as blown away by the modern art collection at the Met, but it was great. I’ve included one of the more famous ones at left with me and my baggy pants for scale, but there were so many that left lasting impressions.

The thing I love about modern art is the way that it makes your mind go places. Timmi spent about 3-4 minutes staring at The One Who Understands by Paul Klee (not my photo — I didn’t take one for some reason) without even realizing that she was staring at it. See my pics (not fully commented yet) for some highlights, though I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have.

After the Met we walked around more of the Upper East Side, including two stops for small lunches, Sassy’s Sliders and Papaya King. We went to the former because Timmi doesn’t like hot dogs and Papaya King doesn’t have seats.

Now, I should explain for people who haven’t been to New York. Papaya King is a hot dog place. They also serve fruit juice, which is I guess why it has the name it does, but that isn’t the weird thing. The weird thing is that there are hot dog places EVERYWHERE here. Not just hot dog carts, which are on every street corner, but real hot dog places, some sit down, some take away, and most have the word “papaya” in the name. I believe Papaya King was the first, but Grey’s Papaya is considered better by many, then there’s Papaya Dog, Mike’s Papaya and more. I just find it really really strange that somehow papaya has been substituted for hot dog in the title of all these places. I suppose Americans might think it’s weird that we sell doughnuts and coffee in a place named after a hockey player, to be fair.

We had two dinners tonight as well (we’re not eating too much, honest), one was at The Tuck Shop, an Australian place that specializes in meat pies that we went to because, come on, how often do you see an Australian place?? I loved it, but Timmi didn’t like her pie, so we went to Original Ray’s for a slice of pizza for her. That brings me to my second outsider’s observation about the weirdness of New York, that there are pizza places all over the place, and most of them have “Ray’s” in the name. There’s Famous Ray’s, Original Rays, and more that I don’t remember.

So, Australian food… a little weird. Timmi had been told that “lamingtons” were really tasty and that we should have one, so I got one to go. Now, the lamingtons available at The Tuck Shop were described as “sponge cake with strawberry jam filling, coated in chocolate and rolled in coconut”.

Reading that, you’d think it would be really sweet, right? I know I did. So you can imagine my surprise when it wasn’t too sweet … in fact, it wasn’t sweet at all. It was sort of salty and bitter. I’ll give Timmi credit, despite me pulling a face that could best be described as “puzzled”, she gave it a try and then pulled a face that could best be described as “a horrified seizure”. I tried again because I couldn’t believe that it could be this bad. It sort of started to grow on me a little, but then I thought, “Why are you trying so hard to like this thing?” I couldn’t come up with a good answer, and so I let it go.

As I type this and reflect, I realize that a disturbing trend is underway … I’m four for four in days where I’ve eaten a hot dog since coming to New York. Don’t get me wrong, I like hot dogs, but I have one about per year normally. This many of the things can’t be good for me.

Tomorrow I’m flying solo as Timmi meets up with her friends. Will the hot dog trend continue? I’m guessing that without her to stop me … there’s a very good chance.

John Food, General

Today was a beautiful day in New York, and we spent most of it outside.

We started the day with a walking tour of Greenwich Village, the highlight of which was a half hour sitting in Washington Square Park watching an amazing Jazz band.

We then walked through the east Village to the Strand Bookstore and spent a good hour poking through rare used books like the geeks we are.

Then we walked up to Union Square to have our lunch around 3:30, or more appropriately, about a half hour after I absolutely needed to have it before I got cranky.

As we sat in Union Square having our lunch, the woman across form us was approached by a man she didn’t know who struck up a conversation.

It soon became obvious that he was trying to sell her something, pushing hard despite her best efforts to discourage him. What surprised us wasn’t that this sort of thing was going on, after all, it’s a big city known for its seamy side, and she was a single woman eating alone in the park.

What did surprise us was what the high pressure sale was for — a hair salon. Even after she told him, “My boyfriend is a hairdresser, he does my hair,” the high pressure sales job continued. Eventually, he gave up and left, much to her relief.

Timmi and I looked at each other after he was gone and I asked her, “Do you think her boyfriend is really a hairdresser?”

She didn’t even hesitate, “Oh god no. She may not even have a boyfriend.” I think Timmi was right. It was a purely defensive maneuver.

New York sure has changed since West Side Story. No longer do random gangs of singing and dancing Italians and Puerto Ricans accost you - now it’s roving hair salon pushers.

After recovering from that, we went back to the hotel, rested and relaxed, then went out for our one-day-delayed anniversary dinner at Le Bonne Soupe, which was fantastic, once we actually found it. It was a great day.

John General

Today was an exhausting day and to be honest, I think it was probably one of the easier ones we’re likely to have here. I’m a little scared.

We took a cruise around Manhattan, walked around Central Park and the Upper West Side, then went to a Yankees / Red Sox game.

I actually hate both the Red Sox and the Yankees, so I was thinking I could boo them both. Then I saw the section we were sitting in. It was about half Boston and half New York fans and it felt like we were sitting in a war zone. Not some clean and nice warzone either, like something from Red Dawn. No no no. This was scary, real, ugly war. Booing was not an option for the polite Jays fans lost in a sea of Boston and New York holy warriors.

We saw someone puke on a family in front of them, then ejected after the entire section stood up and pointed at him chanting “A–hole!” at him –vigilante justice at the baseball stadium!

We saw about 10 other people ejected for various crimes. We also saw two women from a couple of rows ahead of us ejected for flashing the crowd. Sadly, we did not see the flash, but we heard the reaction from the men around us, which was best described as a collective, “OH!” blurted in that distinctly New York way.

These were ejections by cops by the way, not ushers, like at Skydome.

Yankees Stadium for a baseball fan is a history laden, special place. The hot dogs are better (way better) the grass is greener (and real) and there is a sense of awe that comes over you when you look around at the monuments and think of the greats who played here. I’m really glad we went.

That being said (and given that they’re tearing the place down next year) I am not going to go again. I’ll be honest, it was a pain to get tickets to, they weren’t well-organized, the fans were … well… barbarians, and even though there are 3 subway lines serving it, getting there and back was a huge pain.

They sure were good hot dogs though.

I have more stories about the game and whatnot, but I’ll save them.

John General, Sports

Today was the 10th anniversary of the day I married my beautiful wife Timmi. We spent it in New York the way we would spend any other day in another city/country — walking around, soaking up the sites, walking around some more, exploring, and having fun while holding hands the whole time.

I feel lucky every day that I’m with Timmi. I spent every day of the last ten years feeling happier and luckier more in love than the day before.

I look forward to the trend continuing every day for the rest of my life.

John Love

Dean and Deluca Donuts

Lessons learned before leaving Toronto:

John needs his own drink, even when he says he doesn’t. Let’s be honest, he’s just being cheap about paying $2.39 for a Coke Zero at the airport.

Despite her claims about having contingency and following directions, Timmi will always get us to the airport far too early. Even if the rule is to be at the airport 2 hours in advance, she’ll always get us to the GATE 2 hours early.

I don’t actually know what duty-free means or how it works. Booze is very very cheap there. Did you know you can get a spiffy purple Crown Royal messenger bag with 2 litres of Crown Royal in it for only $49? Be the coolest kid at your work with your bright purple Crown Royal messenger bag. Did I mention it was bright? Nothing screams “I’m an alcoholic or the son or daughter of an alcoholic” better.

John needs to soften up on his paranoia about empty water bottles in carry-on luggage. Upon reflection, we probably could have brought an empty water bottle through customs and filled it up here. See item #1.

John Food, General

It’s our anniversary on Wednesday, and to celebrate, we’re going to New York.

I haven’t been since I was in grade 10 on a United Nations trip, and Timmi has never been. It seemed like a fitting place to celebrate being together for 10 great years.

One of the reasons that it’s been a great 10 years is that we compliment each other so well. I’m a laid back kind of guy when it comes to planning. I believe that things will ultimately take care of themselves. Timmi on the other hand, is a compulsive planner. I keep her planning to manageable levels, and she makes sure we actually have something to do.

Between us, we have a great little system. She lists out everything we want to do and categorizes it by type — rainy day, evening, sunny day, weekend etc. We don’t have any particular order to what we’re going to do, but we just start each day by picking a few things out of the stack of cards and going from there.

I’ll let you know how it works out in the big apple!

John Love

For all those people who might see me at Hallowe’en this year and wonder what the living crap I’m wearing … watch this video, because I think this is it!

N - M - Ko - Ooo!

And you know I won’t just be in the 70s gym suit, I’ll be doing the backup dancer dance too.

You can’t wait, admit it.

John The Weeb

So this morning, I'm sitting at my computer and on the other side of the office, Timmi starts laughing. She kept laughing until she was red in the face and couldn't stop. She's still laughing as I write this.

The reason she's laughing?

Someone mentioned a certain type of UK pickles that they really liked called Branston pickles, and she looked it up on Wikipedia and saw the section of the article called:

The Pickle Crisis of 2004

She's still laughing. I might have to take her to a doctor. Just as she starts quieting down, suddenly she'll imagine some shady underworld black market pickle deal with blue haired old grannies in England offering rare and delicious pickles from inside their trenchcoats and it'll all start again.

She just gasped out, “The US had the Cuban missile crisis, the UK had the great pickle crisis.”

How long can one person laugh at something? This can’t be good for her.

John Food

Now, recently my cable lineup changed and I started getting a lot of specialty channels I never got before. Not that I'm complaining, it's nice, but I'm confused.

Let's look at Showcase Action shall we?

The lineup over the next 24 hours includes:

The Mangler (whatever that is, but it sure sounds action oriented)
Cliffhanger (cliff hanging action)
Lethal Weapon 2 (buddy cop action)
Expect to Die (don't know what this is either, but great action name)

Then we have …

Emmanuelle: Intimate Encounters (uh … hot soft core action?)

And finally…

National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Now … okay, it's not a terrible movie. ("Hey look kids, there's Big Ben, and there's Parliament!") But action?

Sure, there's some German slap dancing. There's some passive aggressive French cooking.

I guess I need to downscale my action expectations a little.

John Movies, Television

This morning I was applying some deodorant, which was a gel type (not the type shown in the picture), and after one underarm, I ran out.

Now, I was lucky in that I had a backup / replacement on hand, but I was faced with a hygiene conundrum. It was a different brand and scent (almost said flavour - ew).

I actually stood there for a long time wondering what I should do. Should I go wash the other stuff off? What if someone noticed? Was it at all possible that I could get some sort of strange chemical reaction because of two different types?

I decided to take a walk on the wild side and have two different deodorants today. If anyone notices that I have an asymmetrical smell or if you hear about someone bursting into a manly smelling pillar of flame downtown today, you know why.

John General