baring one shoulder

I love one shoulder dresses...even though they don't work terribly well for people who possess large shoulders. Our eyes are first drawn to the fabric covering one shoulder, then to the bare shoulder, which is magnified 10x. Essentially, these designs are perfect for people with no shoulders, which no swimmer could ever aspire to. One can always dream.

young and entitled

The Emperor's Children by Claude Messud is one of those creations that 'literary' people love. I thought it was quite good, though depressing as all hell and tough to read. A book that weaves in and out of six lives, the majority of whom are young and entitled with plans to take over New York, it just hit a bit too close to home. Messud is an unflinching author with no qualms about creating characters with a variety of less than admirable qualities who enjoy using dialogue sharp enough to leave bloody messes wherever they step.

The stories are compelling even if the characters are primarily unsympathetic. My absolute least favorite is Marina Thwaite, the ravishing authoress-wannabe offspring of the successful journalist Murray Thwaite. Her best friend is Danielle Minkoff, by far the 'nicest' and most sensible character in the book with unusual but moderately attractive looks (you know she'll go FAR in life). Rounding out the cast is Julian Clarke, a gay and loserish Eurasian bum who cooks gourmet meals, Ludovic Seely, a libertarian Australian with dark, slightly gayish looks and plans to take over the world through a literary coup, and other colorful and distasteful characters.

For all of its pizazz, The Emperor's Children doesn't skimp on the substance, although I did wonder what the main message was supposed to be. Don't get your hopes up? Don't feel entitled? Don't be beautiful? Messud cleverly weaves all of the stories together but ends rather surprisingly, yet fittingly. Since it is an ensemble cast, the flow of the story is a bit uneven at times, though good on the whole.

The biggest surprise of The Emperor's Children is that I had to read it in front of my computer in order to expand my vocabulary. Who knew that Mayakovsky was a part of the Russian Futurism movement? And I certainly didn't know what pergola, probascis, and osculate meant before picking up this tome. Anyone other than Messud or a historian who uses the word paterfamilias would come off as conceited, but she manages gracefully, as well as inserting otherwise pretentious vocabulary including naif and uxorious. Messud is a chameleon and master when it comes to language, interspersing highbrow vocabulary with gorgeous phrases such as 'syrupy Thursday afternoons' and everyday ones including 'everything about him looked faggy'.

I apologize for getting carried away by Messud's amazing manipulation of language. Other than that, I do wish that she had softened some of the dialogue and tightened the overall structure a tiny bit. The Emperor's Children is a pretty good read, though Revolutionary Road is still vastly superior despite its mundane vocabulary and inferior wit.

my revolution

This was my first visit to an official book club, and it was pretty fun:) It had all the requisites: women, wine, and home-baked chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies (I felt so pedestrian with my measly contribution of potato chips and pretzels, although I redeemed myself a bit with my terra vegetable chips), and South Philly. OK, maybe not South Philly, a neighborhood that makes West Philly look like Greenwich, CT in comparison. The women were really sweet and a few of them were my age! And not everyone was married! Even better, we actually discussed the book for about an hour before moving onto a more general discussion about conformity, privacy, and facebook.

Our book was Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, a well written and brilliantly executed story about people being stifled by white picket fences and kids in the 1950s. It was also one of the most depressing books that I've ever read. It started out mildly depressing and ended up crumpled in an all-consuming malignant tumor of misery. Also, I spent the day before reading The Emperor's Children, which I can also confidently place in the extremely depressing category.

Revolutionary Road tells the story of a young couple fighting for their grand delusions while saddled with two kids, two unimaginative neighbors, and two hearty scoops of immaturity. Evidently a happy ending wasn't going to materialize, but the weight and absolute soul-crushing account of Frank and April Wheeler was quite unexpected. Who knew suburbia could be that bad?

As the novel starts, April Wheeler, a pretty blond housewife with big plans, is the star of a local play that the neighborhood guild is putting on. We're immediately introduced to the peculiar dynamics of two slightly off-putting people after the play wraps, and the marriage (as well as everything else) doesn't really improve after that. April is stuck doing dishes and scrubbing the oven every day and Frank has a deathly boring job involving typewriter manuals. As a side note, one of the women at the book club (fairly pretty and in her mid twenties) has almost exactly same job (I did anxiously inquire after her mental well-being). It's amazing how much drama Frank endures besides his hypothetical paper cuts.

The book is mostly told from Frank's point of view and is faintly reminiscent of Mad Men on severe depressants. Yates does a beautiful job constructing the dialogue and arranging each scene in a lovely and ultimately well-wrapped arc. The form is good and the function even better. Although all of the characters were heavily (or moderately heavily) flawed, they were all gripping in different ways and one was almost sympathetic. My only complaint is the faint whiff of didactism and the occasional plot device that floats around in the story. Although Revolutionary Road is an indictment on conformity and repression, it also speaks powerfully about family and individual accomplishment. The language is moderately simple but deceptively rich underneath. After 50 years, the book is as relevant today as when it was first published and a joy to read.

feeling fragile

Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We're all vulnerable, and at some point in our lives we will fall. We will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts, that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls. It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.

- Friday Night Lights, Pilot

before and after

Before:

After:

The back story: At 11 last night, I was talking to one of my friends on the phone. Besides letting my nerd factor show (Apparently it's London's Imperial College, not Empirical College), he asked me if I liked milk, chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, and whether I was in my apartment...

A few minutes before midnight, I get a call on my cell informing me that there's a delivery downstairs. Now, that's normal if I'd actually ordered something. Nonetheless, I make my way down and am promptly given three cupcakes and a cookie (sans the milk) by a girl in a hoodie who proceeds to sing Happy Birthday to me. I was bowled over. Society really ought to reward creativity a bit more.

my humble beginnings

Although everyone seems to think that I'm a huge foodie and literary snob (generally an elitist), I have to protest that I come from humble beginnings. Frankly, eating out every day frustrates me. I'm perfectly happy consuming a fried egg on toast and a salad for dinner. My days revolve around burritos, sandwiches, and similarly uninspiring cuisine served from dinky gray trucks with varying degrees of hygiene and overcrowded cafes. If I wasn't so lazy and had some actual skills, I would definitely cook for myself.

In other news, I am still wading through Lolita, which made it into my top 5 but requires a certain mood and an adequate chunk of time and patience to read. This 300 page book is deceptively thin (maybe not my annotated edition) but incredibly rich, crammed with literary references and possibly the best English writing I have ever read (Ian McEwan comes in at a distant second). The experience of reading Lolita is like eating a wonderfully rich and cloying dessert. I want to savor every bite, but not eat it all at once in case I overdose and feel violently ill.

being a girl

OPI's Lincoln Park after Dark. I'm sad that I had to take it off before classes started today. It's got this edgy, slightly retro feel to it. Other pearls of wisdom gleaned over the weekend: leave-in conditioner, hair spray, putty, hair straightener, round brush, hair curler. And let's not forget the color combinations: gray and yellow, pink and gray, NO gray and brown (why?).

foodie forever -- Part III

I haven't written about my last day in NYC because the sheer quantity of food and sugar that I ingested on Sunday was seriously obscene(not looking for a repeat performance any time soon). Before going on, I'm going to backtrack a bit to Dylan's Candy Store and Maltese puppies. Pictures are courtesy of Tiff, as always. We wandered by after brunch on Saturday and before our exhaustive tour of the Met. Dylan's boasts a candy staircase with hard candies displayed nicely under florescent plastic steps. Like all stores, this one was crowded with children and adults streaming towards the chocolate and cupcakes. Even though New York is teeming with people, it has a nice feel to it. The people are intense, but friendly at the same time (I think) and relatively well-educated.

Then we passed by a pet store with some adorable puppies, especially this Maltese that was begging for us to take it home. Although I'm not really an animal person, I wouldn't mind having a tiny ball of fur of my own. On the other hand, I strongly feel that people shouldn't have pets at all. It seems utterly cruel to force animals to live in a completely unnatural and superficial environment instead of being out in the wild. I felt terribly sorry for a set of miserable puppies that were going crazy and running up and down the walls of their cage. No, I'm not an animal activist...or an activist for anything.

On Sunday, we started off the day with brunch at Sarabeth's on the upper west side. I had some amazing salmon eggs benedict (what I usually order for brunch), a bite of the most amazing farmer's omlette ever, another bite of the softest fruit muffin with melted butter, a good amount of four flowers'' mimosa, and bread pudding and their famous 'chubbies' (chocolate cookies) for dessert.

After that extremely satisfying meal, we went by Beard Papa's and Grom, but were all too stuffed to feast on cream puffs and gelato (mmmm...gelato). Instead, we went to Levain Bakery, where we invested in a huge chocolate chip cookie that must have had at least a pound of melted chocolate chips embedded in the dough, a chocolate and peanut chunk cookie, and a rather disappointing rasberry twist brioche. Then it was on to Crumbs for red velvet and mocha cupcakes (which would be consumed about three hours later), and finally to Jacques Torres for an assortment of fine chocolates and cocoa powder dusted almonds.

Although I felt like I was going to explode, I still took part in demolishing some delicious, warm, and microwaved melted red velvet cake. We then went to Giorgio's in Gramercy (Italian is wonderful when you're already stuffed to the gills). For starters, we had some crispy calamari and artichokes as well as a beet salad with an interesting spice. Amy guessed rosemary and I guessed basil (she was correct). For our main course, we split a dish of divine glazed duck breast and another of linguini with lobsters and shrimp. The handmade pasta was al dente to perfection and quite lovely. I was positive that I was going to die at this point, but what sane person passes on dessert? we had a refreshing sorbet trio and their 'flagship' dessert of warm and gooey s'mores cake. After that, we went back to the hotel in Chelsea and collapsed. I didn't think that I would be able to eat again for at least a week (I was very wrong, as usual).

The very next day, I ingested another Jamba Juice for lunch and a Nathan's hot dog in the afternoon at Penn Station. Back at home, I ate dumplings, crabs and lobster, steamed salmon, hand-rolled noodles with pork and mushrooms, english muffins with cheese, bacon, and eggs, steamed buns with melted brown sugar in the center, fried flatbread, and much more over the next week...

gorging myself -- Part II

On Saturday, I started off with a smoothie from Jamba Juice. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that it was my first time there. For someone who professes to be such a foodie, I can't believe that I missed out on something so wonderful (maybe because it's actually healthy). Seriously, if I lived across the street from Jamba Juice, I would go there every morning, even in the middle of winter.

Brunch was at Jojo's, a nice cozy little place on the upper east side. I love restaurants that generally cater to an older crowd because they're calm and the decor is understated (and I'm on my best behavior). When eating, ambiance is not terribly important to me, but comfort is an added bonus. At Jojo's, the three of us shared six small plates: Tuna tartare with chive oil and gaufrette (wafer-like) potatoes; salmon with truffled mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts; hanger steak with gingered mushrooms, asparagus, and soy caramel sauce; cod with marinated vegetables; basil ravioli with Parmesan; and shrimp with salad and a tomato champagne marinade. We finished off with some sorbet. The food was excellent, especially the steak, salmon, and ravioli.

After our atypical brunch, we went to the Met. I was there last when I was ten and didn't remember a single thing. This time, I made sure to go through most of sections (skipping Medieval art and Cypriot art), with highlights in nineteenth century European art, Modern Art, and interesting exhibits in the Oceania wing. Of course, we topped off the whole experience with the lighting of the Christmas tree inside the museum. The lighting itself was masterfully done, with a bottom-up approach and a gradual shift from blue to white light for the nativity scene below the tree.

For dinner, we went to the East Village in search of shabu shabu. Shabu-Tatsu had an hour and a half wait, so we wandered down the street and found Sharaku, a nice little place on the corner that served hot pot. We started off with some sushi and sashimi and ended up cooking awesome tasting meat, vermicelli,and vegetables piece by piece in our pot (we take the process very seriously). I loved the peanut dipping sauce and the other, lighter soy sauce mixture.

We had to get dessert after all of that food, so we went to ChickaLicious. The place was very small (like most dessert places in NYC), but was pretty delicious. We got the tasting menu paired with wines. First, there was some sorbet to cleanse the palette. Then there were three desserts: chocolate cake, sweet potato souffle, and baked pear in parchment paper. I also remember some very good maple syrup ice cream on the side. Of course, the dessert wines were lovely (and strong), with glasses of port, sherry, and madeira that we passed around. Finally, we ended with petit fours, which were quite heavenly. The picture is courtesy of my friend Tiff and her iphone.


On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by Daydream, where we actually got a free ice cream because one of my friends submitted a name for it a few weeks ago (she did not pick daydream). Although it was clearly a Red Mango/Pinkberry wannabe, I liked Daydream much better because its ice cream had less of the traditional sour milk taste. The fruit toppings were quite good (I especially liked the pomegranate and rasberries), as well as the almonds. That marked the end of eating for the day and I felt comfortably full. Tiff later burned off all of the calories on the treadmill at one in the morning while zipping through two editions of wsj while I vegged out in front of the TV and watched CSI:Miami and WaT reruns.

eating until I drop

My motto is doing everything to excess. Moderation is for wimps and people with self-control. When it comes to food, everything else flies out the window...this might explain three days of non-stop eating in NYC last weekend (honestly, who else can hit three bakeries, a gelato place, and a chocolate shop all within two hours right after brunch?).

On Friday evening, I rolled into NY on boltbus ready to get a head start on my food orgy for the weekend. At around 7PM, my friends and I went to K-town, where we always make a pit stop at least once. Korean BBQ's always the way to go, especially in a restaurant with three foot high pumes of smoke leaping from the grill in the middle of the table. Our destination was Shilla and four types of meat for our BBQ, the standard beef bulgogi and kalbi, and pork and chicken as well. Of course, I always get the seafood pancake to start and enjoy all of the little dishes (minus the kimchi). Maybe it's because I'm Asian, but the food is just so satisfying (not that pasta isn't excellent) and homey.

After ingesting a week's worth of meat, we headed down the street to Koryodang, a Korean bakery, where I purchased some tiramisu and a scrumptious mocha cake that turned out to be 90% frosting and 10% cake. We then went across the street to Red Mango, where I gulped down my tiramisu surreptitiously while everyone else munched on overrated ice cream. Red Mango and Pinkberry are so hot right now, they'd actually be doing well in this economy if they were publically traded. As for myself, I'm not a fan of the sour yogurt taste and have avoided it since childhood, where I tried it in a liquid milk form. I confess that I do have mixed feelings about Asian pastries. On the one hand, it's great to eat something that's so airy that it's barely there and lacking the cloying, nauseating sweetness that's the hallmark of industrial-grade frosting. However, it just doesn't quite seem like a real full-bodied cake. Nevertheless, I loved the tiramisu and its liberal dust of cocoa powder on top and was indifferent towards the unbalanced mocha cake.

Afterwards, we went to Times Square and to the Charmin/Duracell store. The idea of promoting something like toilet paper is very strange because it's a commodity (same with batteries). Moreover, we belong to a culture where bodily functions aren't really discussed in polite everyday converation. The Charmin store had around 20 toilet stalls and a comedian with several helpers directing people to each stall. People stood in line to go to one of these 'special bathrooms' (myself included) while he made remarks including "drop it while it's hot" and asked a young boy if he could handle going to the bathroom by himself. The duracell store had bikes/snowmobiles that you could petal in order to generate energy. My conclusion: some products just can't be placed, no matter how good the advertising. Also, since Charmin and Duracell are the top competitors in their generic markets (besides Scott's and Energizer), I'm not sure that they needed more advertising. Nonetheless, it was fun and we finished off the evening with some Godiva truffles and turkish delight.