I went up on Thursday to take a French friend to Google. Yes! I had wanted to do something unique in New York during her visit to the States, and so it only took me a minute to come up with the most random thing in the world, namely a guided tour of Google. Doug was nice enough to invite us to lunch too (thanks again, Doug!), so that made the visit particularly complete. We wandered around the offices, complete with the scooters and scooter parking, micro-kitchens all over the place with all sorts of free yummy treats, and the lego toy area with the hardest of hard-core constructions (an entire motorized ferris wheel!). And kitschy 1950s-style ads for Facebook, Skype and Youtube. I also renewed my certificate in Math Nerd Studies by laughing at such jokes written on the white boards in the hallway as "the 1st element of the mod 7 club is the 8th element of the mod 7 club" and the like. hahahaha. I know, it's only funny to a rather restricted group of nerds out there, but I thought it was hilarious that this was their idea of graffiti :-)
Afterwards, since Google is right in the area, I took my friend to Chelsea Market and the High Line, since you can't hit Chelsea without checking out those areas. Particularly since my grandmother used to rock out at Chelsea Market while she was in training during WWII (yes, she's that much of a rock star). This picture's for you, Grandma Brown!
Friday was a big conference on the French thinker Hélène Cixous, which featured all sorts of different types of speakers (including Cixous herself, but I'd already seen her before). One of the more amusing parts was a panel discussion on the influence of Cixous in a few artists' work, which funkified the Maison Française like it has rarely been funkified before. At first I thought this guy was wearing a pirate hat, but it was in fact a big black hat with a ribbon (and he had impressive dangly earrings that were probably heavier than anything my ears would ever tolerate):
The question of the day was, how many hair colors can you find in the Maison Française at once? Friday afternoon likely broke all records, as you can already tell from this one clandestine shot. I told Natalia that my new goal in life is to have hair like the woman standing up in the back. By that I mean the dye job (dark base with bizarre blond highlights), not the updo!!!
Saturday I hit up the best falafel in the city with Niamh and Ben, but was an idiot and didn't take a picture of it. But I'll brag about it anyway: harissa falafel. yummmmmmm. After that I trekked all the way out to Forest Hills to see a friend who is a hard-core tennis player. We've argued for years about NYC, as she finds it scary and I say she's a wuss. Unfortunately I don't think my trek out to Forest Hills convinced her that the subway is ok, since the damned E train was running local and it took me forever to get out there. But there was a good old margarita waiting when I finally did get all the way out:
Saturday night was again meeting French friends, this time for the Laurie Anderson show at BAM. I felt a bit like a tool for not actually knowing who she was when I was invited to go along, but I quickly consulted the source of all truth and knowledge (wikipedia!) and discovered that she's a pretty big deal. And Niamh told me she had a Laurie Anderson cassette tape when she was growing up...figures the Brits and the Irish were way ahead of us (or me) on this one. It was a neat show, overall. She has a very fine ear for melody (nontraditional, of course) and some of the visual effects were compelling. She told all sorts of different stories, some more powerful and/or interesting than others, but all in all a definite success. Afterwards we joined some other friends for dinner at a nearby sushi restaurant and rocked the Ft. Greene scene.
Sunday I satisfied a craving I've had ever since like 18 months ago, when Andrew and I first discovered the huevos rancheros at Mojave in Astoria. My life has indeed never been the same since. Thank goodness Mojave has a sister restaurant (Agave) on 7th Ave South, as I didn't feel like dealing with the nightmare of getting to Queens from Brooklyn with no G train running. Junette and Ana were nice enough to oblige and join me there (although they were wussy on the margaritas...you two have some work to do!!!). haha. But here I am with the cheeseless wonder that is huevos rancheros sin queso (con huevo, sin manteca, while we're at it):
After that I hit up Dumbo with the same French friend and a friend of her sister, who knew the whole contemporary art festival scene there. We saw all sorts of interesting local stuff and of course got our pictures with the Manhattan skyline, along with all the tourists and newlyweds (we should have posed, I only just thought of that right now!).
Otherwise, my time was spent catching up with friends and giving a presentation on one of my chapters to a workshop in my program. All in all very cool and fun, and I got some good ideas on where to go from here. I enjoyed it immensely and was told that it was a fun conversation (even if I went on a tirade about my moral opposition to colons in the process of answering a question about the title of my diss). So I sort of feel like maybe by telling me "your presentation was fun," people actually meant "you are batshit insane...thus entertaining for the rest of us." But then again, as Junette and I decided a long time ago when we drunkenly won the orchestra concerto competition on the Bach Double, if you're not going to get by with talent, you've gotta do it with charm.
And when I wasn't DRINKING with friends, I was MAKING drinks with friends, namely Steven, who was working on a few different batches of home brew. The newest batch was actually overzealously yeasty (if that's a word), to the point that it had to have an extra air valve so as not to send the top flying into the ceiling. Which would of course have been kind of amusing, but not so good for the ceiling or the books that might have gotten soaked in the process. I took this picture for the sake of the brewing apparatus but then realized that it's actually Steven in a nutshell: tons of books and hard core beer. Steven, this is your new facebook profile pic, you KNOW it:
Then Monday night it was bottling time for the other batch, on the left in the above pic. It started with a sieve process to mix in a special sugar to get the yeast going again (which apparently is what makes the carbonation when the beer is bottled). The beer itself at this point is rather syrupy and non-carbonated. We tasted it and it did seem pretty good, but Steven said it would be slightly less sweet (and bubbly, of course) once it has had the 2 weeks of bottle time before being ready to drink:
Then I got a demonstration of the capper, I should note that I filled all those bottles!
Finally, I'll sign off with one last picture, from last night. I spent the night with Judy, since my presentation ran late and I didn't want to haul all the way out to Brooklyn just to turn right back around this morning to get to the train. That's the official reason. The unofficial reason was of course that I was way overdue for a visit with Harlequin Obama, who was just as charming as ever :-)
He's as big as always but distinctly smaller than Sebastian. We think he got more ragdoll while Sebastian got more coon. That explains why Harley's hair is longer and why he's a bit smaller and floppier. Judy was like, you're the only person I know who picks up Harley and says, "oh, he is definitely smaller!" haha.
On that note, I'm totally collapsing with fatigue, so there's only one thing to do: Glee time! I never saw the season opener, and I REALLY need to see the Britney episode from last night. Ah how the mighty have fallen :-)
