541 Amsterdam Ave at 86th St
New York, NY 10024
212-724-4707

Had a lox and cream cheese on an onion bagel with tomato and onion there, preceded by latkas. The latkas were amazing, the bagel generous with the lox deliciously salty, the cream cheese creamy, the onion sweet, and the tomato.. well.. tomatoey. Not great on the drinks side, but you’re not there for the coffee or cocoa, so it’s a non-issue.

Yummy.

Note: Their web site lets you order stuff online. Pricy, but some folks love their fish. And indeed, their fish is good.

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309 E 83rd St
New York, NY 10028
212-737-5656

Pricy little restaurant in the upper east side of Manhattan. Excellent meal, but not something I’d go to all the time, as in the end, I can’t see myself repeatedly spending that much for good Japanese food. However, the Chilean sea bass, their specialty, is especially tasty.

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4371 Glencoe Ave #B-4
Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
310-822-3700

It took Sun and I a year of living in Venice before trying this place, even if it was the closest sushi restaurant (with a Japanese name) from home. Why, I don’t know. I suppose a bit of bias about a sushi restaurant sandwiched between Vons and Savon sort of gave us pause.

Boy, were we stupid.

Irori is charming in decor, with raised floors to sit on with convenient empty spaces under the table, making it look like you’re squatting when in fact, you’re just hanging out… some think this is cheating, I think it’s an indoor engawa, so hey, there ya go, it’s still “”ethnic”", if you’re a real snob about that sort of thing.

All that aside, what’s really important is the food. It is excellent. The sushi is prepared well (you know, the fish flops over the rice, no skimping), and the variety is competent. I can walk in and know I can have toro, uni, and ebi (along with frying the heads) and they’ll be fresh and tasty. As for price, it’s not cheap, but it’s not prohibitive. It’s basically like Taka in that regard, a good sushi house with best bang for buck.

Finally, it being two minutes away by car is a nice little plus for us.

Update:
Apparently since fall last year Irori had a new chef, Masa, who some chowhounds say is arguably the best sushi chef in Los Angeles. So you could say Sun and I weren’t so stupid after all: we didn’t bother going to Irori until after Masa arrived.

Heh.

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On a rainy day after New Year Sun and I went to the 3rd Street Farmer’s Market for breakfast. I’d hoped DuPar’s was open, but apparently I’ve been out of it as the place has been closed for renovation and won’t be open till March. We had breakfast anyway at Charlie’s, then headed for the Grove.

Normally, I avoid the Grove like the plague, as its parking structure is one of the worst designed of its kind, and the number of people that go there defy logic considering the number and variety of shops that call the place home (only one department store, even venerable malls had at least two).

Unfortunately, The Matador is on limited release and showing in only two theaters in Los Angeles: this godforsaken place and one of my favorite venues, the Arclight. However, the Arclight only had afternoon shows, so the Grove it became.

Thankfully, at ten in the morning, parking is a cinch.

So let’s get to it, I’ve rambled long enough. The Matador is a good movie. I liked it a lot. Pierce Brosnan was especially good. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him any better, except maybe in The Tailor of Panama. Greg Kinnear does well, too, but it’s definitely Brosnan’s moment to shine. The story itself is rather simple, but it does throw in a couple of nice twists, which aren’t relied upon to carry the film (like The Usual Suspects or Sixth Sense) but do make it a nice ride. The main point and best part of the film is simply Pierce Brosnan and Greg Kinnear becoming buddies and learning to accept and take responsibility for that relationship.

I’m fairly sure this’ll be on my DVD list when it gets printed in, oh, let’s say three months.

By the way, it took ten minutes to get out of the parking structure — whoever designed that really knew how to emulate the 405 freeway as a multi-storied enclosed space.

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So. New York.

Here goes.

Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way… nevermind, I don’t have a stairs. Anyway, all that happened around 5:00 in the morning. I’d packed and showered the night before so I wouldn’t have to do too much in the wee hours of the morning. Sun dropped me off at LAX and I had time for a hot chocolate and a croissant before boarding.

Seeing as I have never in all my years prior gone on a plane as anything but coach, I had a smug little smile on my face as I got to board first with my business class ticket. Let’s just say the trip felt short, as I had the chair reclined and the leg rests extended the entire time.

Took a cab from JFK to Kim’s place in Brooklyn Heights and from there we took the subway to Manhattan for dinner. It’s somewhere on 6th St. down near NYU where all the Indian restaurants are — we were at the Raj Mahal.

Afterward we went and saw Narnia at the theater complex literally 50 ft. from her door.

Merry Christmas.

The next morning, the 26th, found us back in Manhattan looking for Barney Greengrass. My Mapopolis map of New York said it was somewhere on 68th in the west side but all that was there were projects. Finally called 411 and found they were on 86th. Someone made a typo on my map.

Lox and cream cheese bagel with latkas to start. Delicious.

Happy Hanukkah.

After that we walked about and ended up at Sak’s so Kim could exchange the cashmere sweater she got for Ali that ended up being too short on the sleeves.

Yes. A department store. On one of the biggest sale days ever. Argh.

I learned two things at Sak’s:
1. The men’s department has a high percentage of extremely well-dressed gay black men for employees.
2. If you buy a sweater and return it on the day after Christmas, one of the biggest sale days of the year, you’ll find you can now buy two of those sweaters and still get some pocket money back.

Dinner was back in Brooklyn Heights, specifically, near the Brooklyn Bridge at a pizza place called Grimaldi’s. There’s all sorts of historical stuff about this place, but everyone knows how to Google so I’ll just say it was good pizza.

That night Kim and I decided we’d see if it was even possible to try to get tickets for Spamalot. So the next morning, while she went to work, I got off a couple stops early and headed for the TKTS booth in downtown, only to find that they weren’t selling any tickets for Spamalot, and besides, a lot of crazy fools had lined up along a whole block by the time I got there half an hour before the office opened.

So I hopped back on the subway and headed for Times Square to see if the Shubert Theatre’s box office had tickets. They only had premium seats. You know. $350. But he did mention the existence of standing room tickets, of which 20 go on sale on the day of the performance for $21.50. So if I showed up the next day when the box office office opened, I could pick up a couple of those and be on my merry way. Good news, that.

I took the subway back from Times Square to Kim’s work, the Rubin Museum of Art. Right by the subway station I picked up some donuts and got Kim to eat two of them when I arrived at the museum. Then I spent a couple hours touring the exhibit and essentially got to know certain motifs in Tibetan Buddhist art real well.

For lunch we went to Pasti’s, which is one of Kim’s favorite places in New York, and I can’t help but agree. My Croque Monsieur was fantastic, if a bit monstrous in size, like that’s something to complain about.

The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a break from all the walking.

Dinner was in the upper east side at a tiny Japanese place called Donguri. Pricy, but tasty. I had the sea bass. We had dinner with Anthony, who I had met once or twice over the last ten years by virtue of being at the same parties with Kim. After dinner we had drinks at Anthony’s parents’ restaurant, Luxia.

Morning. Time to head to the Shubert Theatre. I figured showing up a half hour before the box office opened at 10am would be okay, and promptly found over 30 people in line in front of me. Crap! Only 20 tickets! I spent the next half hour hoping while the line behind me grew to over 100. 20 tickets, yes, but there were also 20 tickets for the matinee show. If most of the folks in front of me only wanted matinee tickets, I would still be able to get my evening performance tickets. I did call Kim and tell her that if only matinee tickets were available, I’d go selfish and just get one for myself. Heh. As I got up to the ticket booth one of the employees yelled out, “”There are no more tickets…”" And then she paused. Paused! “”… for the matinee show.”" Hallelujah!

I walked out of there with my two standing room tickets (assigned spaces #1 and #3) absolutely jubilant. I strolled about Times Square, checking out the new LCD walls, and somehow or other ended up with a McDonald’s hash brown for breakfast. Just one.

I met up with Kim at her work and went to lunch at the City Bakery. The lunch was good, but the hot chocolate was excellent. Kim headed back to work and I caught a movie (The Producers).

We had dinner at the Mercury Bar near Times Square, just appetizers really since lunch and the cocoa were still sitting in our guts, and soon enough it was time for the show.

Spamalot. Is good. Go see it.

We got home around 11:00 and I packed up and showered. Ordered the car service and said good night to Kim, who wanted me to wake her up when I left (at 4:15 in the morning) but just in case she was dead to the world we said our goodbyes then.

She managed to wake up and croak goodbye when I left.

Thank god for first class. The trip would have been hell if not for that. Everyone flies on all days between Christmas and New Year (not on those days themselves, though, hence finding a perfect flight over). The plane I was on was heading for LAX but I only had a seat to DFW. My plane to Long Beach, not LAX, was three hours after I landed in Dallas. There were over 100 people on standby for the five other flights heading to Los Angeles prior to my flight. The airline counter folks basically told me if I had a boarding pass for a flight out I should just sit for three hours and guard it with my life. Wow.

I zipped about the terminals at DFW and found the new one with the shops and restaurants. Still on a lox and cream cheese bagel kick, I got one and strolled about a mini-Brookstone.

By the time I arrived at Long Beach, I’d been awake 11 hours, six of them on a plane, three of them in Dallas (I perhaps forgot to mention that DFW is one of my least favorite airports). I was looking at another one and a half hours on buses and trains to get home. Again, thank you, first class.

Then again, thank you Sun. I called baby doll up right when we landed to discover she was already at Long Beach airport to pick me up — the servers had gone down at work and they sent everyone home.

It’s been a long time… uh.. it’s been never where I get off a plane, walk down the stairs and stroll 50 feet out the fenced gate into the street. Long Beach Airport, how tiny, how quaint, how wonderful. Hell, Sun couldn’t find the terminal for a while because she didn’t realize the small building she kept passing was the terminal.

It had been a fun little vacation. Didn’t do much in the way of touring, but why should I when I’ve spent a lot of weekends there on my escaped from New Haven back in the day. Just hanging with a friend.

So there you go. New York.

I wanted to see the musical, but by the time I thought about it’d left LA, and by the time I got to New York I was more interested in Spamalot, and besides, Lane and Broderick had left the tour. So here’s second prize.

It certainly kept to being a musical, and an old-fashioned one at that. Of course, seeing as I love musicals, particularly of this type, I enjoyed myself. Lane and Broderick were hilarious. Will Ferrell, slightly restrained by having to act perhaps much crazier than usual (odd, huh?), was great. And Uma Thurman was… well… now Ulla dance.

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I never read C.S. Lewis, mostly because when I got around to trying I found myself too old. This means that I was too crotchety to be young again and is in no way a fault on Lewis’ part. I admit that reading The Lord of the Rings over the ages of seven to nine probably helped in my snobbery, as well. Oddly enough, I can be young again when I go to the movies, so I suppose wanting to watch this film counts for something.

The imagery was wonderful and parts of it went a long way towards feeling magical, but sadly it fell a little short. The pacing of the story was especially problematic in much the same way asthe earlier Harry Potter films, leading me to the assumption that the problem lay in the attempt to adapt the book into a screenplay and not letting anything get cut.

A book is a book, a movie a movie. Fans need to understand that and let the movie become its own thing (even I have problems with such acceptance, so don’t nobody start calling me a pot). A bit of streamlining was in order, and it wasn’t done.

That said, the movie certainly is magical in parts, and I have no problems recommending it as a matinee or rental. But if you want something really magical, you’re much better off renting The Neverending Story.

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