Big Apple Randomnities

Also known as “I really should have dug Jenn’s camera out a few more times.”

“Everything to Me” video

The video for “Everything to Me,” the first single off of Liz Phair’s new album, Somebody’s Miracle, is now at Yahoo! Music.

(Exasperatingly, it doesn’t seem to work with Firefox. This is what I keep Internet Explorer around for: those once a month instances where a site only seems to work with IE.)

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Well, I’m back.

Sunday, we discussed the proper amount of baking soda for pancakes, I had my one hot coffee for the year, walked around some more and had a Reuben (well, it was a panini Reuben — even this most sacred of sandwiches is not immune to being swept up in the New York trendy food of the moment).

Joel’s friend Jeff and his lovely significant other came over to visit. Beginning in early October, they’ll be in Tanzania for a year, tracking the distribution of AIDS medication in sub-Saharan Africa. That said, Jeff was horrified that I would be flying out to Southern California. I’m pretty sure these sorts of attitudes are how the east/west rap wars started.

Then I caught a plane, whereupon I read most of my brother’s copy of Freakanomics, in the hopes of ripping off some of their good questions as jumping off points for articles of my own. When someone builds that particular better mousetrap, rest assured I will be the first one to their door.

Once back on Californian soil, I was rewarded with 1) my hot and sexy wife, 2) no humidity, 3) a Double Double, Animal Style.

It’s good to be home.

… it’s Saturday Night

Just got back to Casa Yarbrough East.

Today, we walked about 10 miles. New Yorkers are insane about walking, although it does keep the sort of morbidly obese folks you see in the rest of the country to a real minimum here.

We walked to the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company (I bought a t-shirt and a poster map of New York with locations of superheroic interest conveniently marked) …

Walked to see Ground Zero at the World Trade Center …

And walked through the Feast of San Gennaro (the patron saint of Naples) in Little Italy, where I had some decent lasagna.

I think the New Yorkers are screwing with me about this being mild humidity.

Live from New York

I’m writing this from the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City. I’m visiting my brother, his wife and my new niece.

Flying out here was an all-day adventure yesterday. It was my first experience with JetBlue, who are significantly better than Southwest Airlines, my previous experience with low-cost airlines. Airline travelers, though, are still exasperating: The odds that an airplane would take back off with 40 adults still on board are rather slim — “Sorry, but we have to make it to Rochester by 9:17!” — but the way people claw and scratch so they can be the first to stand in the aisle and wait to deplane, you’d think it was an everyday thing.

I’ve been in California so long, I realized that I’d likely forgotten a lot of the things that made California California and conversely had forgotten a lot of things about the east coast, including New York, where I visited quite a bit growing up and lived briefly in the late 1990s. The first thing that struck me after deplaning was “oh yes, they have humidity.” It’s apparently better than it has been recently, but after years of living in the Southern California desert, it was quite noticeable.

The other thing was how many dark-haired people are in New York City. I think me, my sister-in-law and my niece all under one roof makes this the most blonde household in New York this weekend.

But I’ve accomplished one of my goals for the weekend already: I had Chinese food. One of the greatest things about New York is that there’s a great Chinese place on pretty much every block. Bafflingly, this does not seem to be true in Southern California, despite an equally large Chinese population.

I’ll also be visiting the World Trade Center this weekend, visiting the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company and getting a Reuben. Once, when we lived in North Hollywood, a sandwich shop tried to put lettuce and tomato on a Reuben for me. I’ve pretty much given up on them on the West Coast since that point.

I also mentioned that doing to a Reuben would get them shot in much of New York, and rightly so.