Looking Back and Ahead

In retrospect, it was a good year.

Chicago to NYC.

Lakeview to Park Slope.

My wife getting a good job.

My wife getting accepted into an Ivy-League grad school program.

Trips to Portland, Aruba, Chicago, Baltimore, Montreal, and Raleigh.

Saying goodbye to a childhood home in NJ and saying hello to my parents' new home in NC.

Getting to know NYC.

Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Rangers, Cyclones games. Colbert Show taping. Belle & Sebastian and Death Cab concerts.

Finishing my graduate degree program.

Moving to NYC for one industry but ending the year in a totally different one.

Having friends and family visit us in Park Slope.

Having good friends and family.

Here's to a good 2007 for everyone.....

Christmas in Carolina

Christmas means empanadas and other treats (pictured at left). Oh yes, and it also means family, of course.

We went down to Raleigh, NC to see my family. It was a good time - saw the folks and their new house and my sis, bro-in-law and three nephews. Also, my brothers arrived for the festivities.

Christmas Eve and Day were a blur with seeing family, eating, drinking, more eating, playing with the kids, and then eating again.

While we were down there we got to see my parents' new house which is quite nice and comfortable. Also, we went to the North Carolina Museum of Art, went shopping, saw the Carolina Hurricanes defeat the Florida Panthers, and had a nice dinner at Bonefish Grill, which apparently is a chain restaurant.

We returned to NYC and have been bumming around the last few days trying to enjoy the last remnants of holiday vacation!

Lazy Sunday

Still the best!

dick in a box (better quality)

Because it's taken them this long to come up with something almost as funny as "Lazy Sunday."

Al di La and Xmas Gifts

Last night we decided to have our own xmas celebration by going to Al di La. We waited outside in a line for about 10 minutes before it opened and shortly after opening its doors, the place was packed!

Al di La is consistenly known as one of the best restaurants in the city and it did not disappoint. We both started off with salads but the showstoppers were the main courses - homemade gnocchi that melts in your mouth and braised pork shank served osso buco style.

Afterwards, we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas on DVD and exchanged gifts since we will be out of town for the holiday. I got lots of good stuff including tickets to a Nets/Knicks game! Now I can cheer on the Nets AND heckle the Knicks and Isiah Thomas at the same game.

Paul McCartney & Wings_Wonderful Christmas Time

Thanks for the award, Time

Okay, it's old news by now but gimme a break, I'm just catching up on blogging.

So, Time Magazine's Person of the Year, apparently, is us. All of us. And yes, to be sure, it was quite a year for user-generated content. Many of us had never heard of MySpace or YouTube until this year. And don't forget about the bloggers.

There's something about this award that doesn't seem right. An old media outfit like Time ought to be selecting someone influential in world affairs, politics, business, or pop culture - instead of emphasizing the fact that the very media it's based its business on is increasingly becoming controlled by end users like us.

So, Time, I am here to give you my own award. It's called the "Media Title Most Rapidly Declining in Relevance" Award. Congratulations! It's you!

Melt

On Thursday night, we went to Melt for dinner. We've been there a few times and it doesn't disappoint. Between the cool, modern decor, good service and quality food, Melt is an underappreciated restaurant in the Park Slope area. It's popularity is only hindered by the fact that it's on a side street (Bergen) as opposed to being located directly on 5th Ave.

We started off with the gambas al ajillo and mango crab salad then moved to the entrees - braised boneless beef short ribs for my wife and the Long Island Duck for me. Good stuff!

Time for Isiah to Go

In any other job, in any other industry - this guy would have been fired a long time ago. The fact that he hasn't speaks volumes about the incompetence of Knicks owner James Dolan. Isiah has failed at everything since leaving the court - from the CBA to the Raptors and Pacers organizations and now the Knicks. He's assembled bad players, fired good coaches, and now instigates fights. On top of that, he does it all with a cocky smirk and smiles his disturbing smile during press conferences. Hmm, come to think of it, Isiah reminds me of President Bush. Both are incompetent yet continue to keep their jobs!

Mike Lupica of the NY Daily News had a great summation of the state of affairs:


Thomas at centerof withering Garden
Isiah Thomas has made Madison Square Garden cheap, everywhere except in ticket prices, everywhere except the money he has spent on a team that can't win games, only fights. Go find somebody lately who has done this much to run the place into the ground.
Thomas got away with another one yesterday, got off without a suspension for his role in Saturday night's wrestling show at the Garden, got off with a fine that James Dolan will pay for him, the way he has paid for Stephon Marbury and the rest of the players on a 9-17 team. What does Thomas care? It's not his money. What does Dolan care? It's not his, either, unless you think he's the Dolan who built Cablevision.
The Knicks couldn't come close to beating the Denver Nuggets in a basketball game on Saturday night. But with the help of NBA Commissioner David Stern, the Knicks sure gave the Nuggets a good beating yesterday, as Stern got his punishments so wrong you don't know where to start. Well, start here: The guy who runs the league couldn't even identify the guilty parties, or who started the thing.
Now the Nuggets might lose their whole season because they lose Carmelo Anthony for 15 games, the biggest suspension Stern handed out yesterday. But no matter how much Isiah Thomas loses, how many games he loses and how much money he wastes and how much the Garden loses in prestige and all the old ideas about it because of him, he just keeps going.
I am standing in front of the Garden on Sunday morning, in front of the famous marquee on Seventh Ave., and remembering what it was like back in the '90s, when it would only say "Michael Jordan Tonight" on that marquee and this was the only place in town you wanted to be. You know when that will happen with Isiah Thomas in charge of basketball at the Garden? Never.
Now, in the aftermath of a fight that everybody but the commissioner of the NBA seems to know Thomas instigated, you wonder what type of further embarrassment it will take for Dolan to tell the guy to go back to Chicago or Indiana, go anywhere and get himself good and lost.
Somehow Thomas smiles through it all as he slips another punch, whether it is the kind of punches being thrown around between the Knicks and Nuggets or a sexual harassment suit against him and Dolan and the Garden. He is as slippery as we've ever had in a job like his in New York. Maybe he smiles the way he does, through all the boos and catcalls, because he has his hooks into a dream sucker like Dolan.
The late great Bill Veeck once said that the definition of a hustler is a guy who beats you out of bus fare and makes you feel as if he did you a favor. That is Thomas, and that is his relationship with Dolan.
Thomas has run through money, and players, for three years. Once again his customers left the building on the dead run Saturday night. And when it was over, there was the sight of Dolan's team president and coach not just smiling in the aftermath of an event Dolan himself called "ugly" and "deeply regrettable" yesterday, he was laughing.
So Carmelo Anthony gets 15 games for being dumb enough to slug the scrub Thomas sent into the game to start the trouble. Denver's J.R. Smith gets the same suspension - 10 games - that the Knicks' Nate Robinson got, even though it was Robinson who did the most to make the incident more dangerous and more stupid than it ever should have been.
Thomas? He gets nothing from Stern, not even a real reprimand. Absolutely wonderful. The other coach, George Karl, is supposed to be the one we blame because he wanted to leave the gym with a big win.
"[The incident] was directed by Isiah," Karl, 10 times the basketball coach Thomas is, said yesterday, speaking more honestly about Saturday night than the commissioner. "His actions after the game were despicable."
Stern did go as far as saying he was annoyed with Thomas for trying to blame the Nuggets for what happened. Really? He couldn't have been too annoyed, because he turned around and did everything possible to knock the Nuggets right out of the ring. Stern must be awfully proud of what the Garden has become on Dolan's watch, and Thomas' watch.
The best part of all this, the most wonderful part of all, is Thomas talking about class yesterday as he defended himself. "Show some class," that's what he said he was telling Anthony.
He knows as much about class, what kind of class the Garden used to have, as he does about putting together a winning basketball team. When he is gone, both the Knicks and the Garden will be better off without him. That's it and that's all. Originally published on December 19, 2006

Hall & Oates - Jingle Bell Rock

Gearing Up for the Holidays

Yesterday, we finally checked out the lit-up arch at Grand Army Plaza. Dope on The Slope has some good pics of it here.

Also, we went to the Park Slope Ale House for the first time. The ambience was pretty good as far as pubs go, jalapeno poppers and onion rings were satisfactory but bad '70's rock over the speakers dampened an otherwise good experience.

Mallory ruins Alex's Princeton Interview

Classic Scene from Family Ties

Burnout

Just catching up on my issues of New York magazine and read a great article about burnout.

I had never blogged about a job that I recently left (and won't go into details here) but after reading this article, I'm even more certain that it was burnout.

Some highlights from the article:

In 1981, Maslach, now vice-provost at the University of California, Berkeley, famously co-developed a detailed survey, known as the Maslach Burnout Inventory, to measure the syndrome. Her theory is that any one of the following six problems can fry us to a crisp: working too much; working in an unjust environment; working with little social support; working with little agency or control; working in the service of values we loathe; working for insufficient reward (whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback).

AND

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Maslach’s research is that burnout isn’t necessarily a result of overwork. It can be, certainly. Michael Leiter, a lovely Canadian fellow and frequent collaborator of Maslach’s, has elegantly called burnout a “crisis in self-efficacy,” which to me suggests that head-banging feeling of struggling mightily for too little or (worse) nothing in return.

AND

And Farber often calls burnout “the gap between expectation and reward,” which may have the most relevance to New Yorkers. This has always been a city of inflated expectations. People with more modest aims for themselves seem less prone to disillusionment.

TSVTL - Version 2.0

Yes, TSVTL stands for The Slope Via The Lake. And now we've (and by we, I mean me) enabled comments. We'll see what you have to say for yourself.

BEST MUSIC OF 2006

Is it too early to do this list? Maybe. Maybe not. This is not definitive and not necessarily in order of best to worst or worst to best. But here are some of the songs from 2006 that made an impact on me (as well as on my wallet thanks to iTunes).

1. "Lloyd I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken" - Camera Obscura (pictured above)
2. "The Greatest" - Cat Power
3. "Rise Up With Fists!!" - Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
4. "Whisper Pitch" - Stereolab
5. "Think Long" - Mates of State
6. "In the Future When All's Well" - Morrissey
7. "Cheated Hearts" - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
8. "Another Sunny Day" - Belle and Sebastian
9. "It's a Hit" - We Are Scientists
10. "Throw It All Away" - Zero 7
11. "Promiscuous" - Nelly Furtado and Timbaland
12. "Liar" - Built to Spill
13. "All of My Days" - Alexi Murdoch
14. "Hearbeats" - Jose Gonzalez
15. "The Eraser" - Thom Yorke
16. "Crazy" - Gnarls Barkley
17. "Wolf Like Me" - TV On The Radio
18. "Incinerate" - Sonic Youth
19. "Young Folks" - Peter Bjorn and John
20. "Pittsburgh" - The Lemonheads
21. "Burning" - The Whitest Boy Alive
22. "Smile" - Lily Allen
23. "You Made It" - DJ Shadow and Chris James
24. "Phantom Limb" - The Shins
25. "Everybody" - Basement Jaxx
26. "Put Your Records On" - Corinne Bailey Rae
27. "Star Witness" - Neko Case
28. "Publish My Love" - Rogue Wave
29. "Stars Above Us" - Saint Etienne
30. "Ageless Beauty" - Stars
31. "Sweatshop" - Brazilian Girls
32. "Swimmers" - Broken Social Scene (this came out in 2005 but I listened to it a billion times this year)

Exploring Brooklyn

Since the temps warmed up today we decided to get some sun and explore BK a little more, walking down the Atlantic Ave. (full of antique stores, shops and restaurants) and once again going through Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill, visiting the main drags of Smith Street and Court Street. Lots of cool stores, bars, and restaurants and we came across a branch of the hip travel store Flight 001.

We also found a large movie theater and Barnes and Noble around Atlantic and Court St. that we had not known about before. Good to know for future movie watching needs.

We ended the excursion with lunch at Franny's, which was recently voted as one of the best pizza places in NYC by Time Out New York. It's good but not great and certainly not cheap. Maybe we're spoiled by the stuffed pizza in Chicago but we don't think it holds a candle to Chicago's Art of Pizza or My Pie.

Afternoon Delight

Yesterday afternoon, we finally checked out Hunan Delight on the corner of Union/6th in Park Slope. The restaurant recently underwent a makeover and looks great and the prices for the lunch specials could not be beaten.

I got the chicken lo mein with egg drop soup and fried rice while my wife got the chicken with garlic sauce, wonton soup and white rice. Her meal was not what she expected but the chicken lo mein did deliver and both soups were good. Also we had an egg roll and vegetable roll, respectively to start things off and they were pretty good too. Best of all was the price - a whopping $13.50 plus tax and tip. Not a bad deal at all.

Night out in BoCoCa

Last night we met up with a friend and grabbed some Thai food at Joya on Court Street (between Warren and Wyckoff) in Cobble Hill. The place was packed but food good and prices cheap. We had the Pad Thai and Pad See Yue and started off with the tiger shrimp rolls.

Afterwards we headed to Boerum Hill for some drinks at The Brooklyn Inn - great atmospehere, good jukebox but limited seating.

Run DMC- Christmas In Hollis

Nothing says Christmas like RUN DMC. Happy Holidays!