So, I came home and my parents had cooked some squash and some chicken. I decided to play with my food and make a curry out of it. I cut up the paprika-spiced chicken, I scraped the squash out into a pot of coconut milk and added Thai red curry as well as an Indian ginger/garlic paste. Lastly, I put water chestnuts in. I ate it over rice. It was pretty good. I would do a couple of things different, but it was def delish. During Autumn, I’ve realized, I want absolutely every meal I eat to include squash or, if I have it exactly how I want it, pumpkin. I go crazy for pumpkin. That is why the week after this venture, I convinced Maeve to make a pumpkin alfredo sauce with me. We do not have photo documentation. I am not upset about this. Let’s just say when a recipe calls for pumpkin puree, don’t use pumpkin pie filling. It’s hard to persuade pie filling to taste savory. I’m not discouraged, though. I know what I did wrong and I’m excited for the second try. Here are the other pictures of my pumpkin-family (squash) curry: 
Samuel Dickison came to visit me in mid-October and I don’t know if I’ve ever had that much fun taking someone around the City before. We did it ALL–which means I got to go everywhere that I like to go and he got to go everywhere I like to go. What a great deal, right? I will try to recount the itinerary, though I can’t imagine remembering everything we did.
Tuesday Oct 13th
- Samuel arrived at the Philadelphia airport at 9:30 PM
-Get home, talk into the morning hours and go to bed.
Wednesday Oct 14th ( I took off from work )
-Brooklyn Bagels shmeared with cream cheese (and ham!)
-DUMBO (Visit shops and galleries on Front St and the parks by the bridges)
-Walked over the Brooklyn Bridge
-Dylan’s Candy Bar and Serendipity (frozen hot chocolates and lunch, yes in that order)
-Roosevelt Island gondola
-Stumptown Coffee at the newly opened Ace Hotel
-Thrift store shopping
-Highline Park
-The Dodos and Ruby Suns at the Bowery Ballroom
-Treacherously long trek home on the exceptionally evil Q train
Thursday Oct 15th (Samuel braves it alone in NYC during the day)
-Guilianos (Sausage egg cheese and a hashbrown patty on an english muffin)
-Fraunces Tavern (Where President Washington gave his farewell address)
-Stone Street (Oldest remaining street in NYC)
-Staten Island Ferry
-Wall St, New York Stock Exchange, Trinity Church
-Battery Park
-World Financial Center and Ground Zero
-Museum of Natural History
-Meet up at Grimaldi’s Pizzeria
-Superfine
Friday Oct 16th (Samuel braves it one more day)
-Columbus Circle
-Central Park
-Metropolitan Museum of Art?
-Meet up at Metis
-Dunkin’ Donuts
-DiFara’s Pizzeria (Best Pizza in the WORLLLLLD)
-Coney Island
Saturday Oct 17th
-Brunch at Cafe Cortadito
-LES
-9th St Espresso
-St Mark’s Place
-Avett Brothers at Terminal 5
-Times Square
-Torrential downpour in Union Square
-Gyros from a street vendor
-Alison’s Housewarming Party
Sunday Oct 18th
-Church
-Post-church fellowship and grazing
-Chinese food for lunch with Daddy-O
-Where the Wild Things Are with Mom and Pattie Ann
- Carrol Gardens
-Hang at Maeve’s apartment
-Buttermilk Channel
Monday Oct 19th (I took off from work)
-Sleep in
-5th Ave in Park Slope
-Gorilla Coffee
-Thrift Stores
-Katz’s Deli
-SoHo
-MarieBell hot chocolate
-The Strand
-Union Square
-Pre-CMJ Industry Party at Rebel NYC
-Go home and get packed up
-Drop off at the MegaBus stop outside of Madison Square Garden at 1:30 AM
For Halloween, Maeve and I and some of our friends dressed up as the villains from the musical, Annie. Of course, we chose to channel the 1982 film version with Carol Burnett as Ms. Hannigan , Tim Curry as her brother, Rooster, and Bernadette Peters as Lily St. Regis, Rooster’s lady friend, because nobody did it justice like they did. As you can see, we rocked it:
I simply can’t get enough of this Cuban restaurant, Cafe Cortadito. I first came across the name while I was searching for coffee shops in New York City that made my favorite coffee drink– the cortadito. After multiple failed attempts to visit, it was almost a year later that I was first able to eat here with Peter Kong this past July, when we ran into it entirely by accident on the most serendipitous of days.
Since it was a warm summer afternoon, the windows were open and the sunshine pouring in was brightening up the already lively little cafe, playing off the warm orange and amber tones in the decor. The service was phenomenal– very friendly without being fake and very fast without making you feel like you couldn’t lounge in there the rest of the evening, had we so desired. Patricia, the owner’s wife serves as hostess and is very attentive to customers while her husband, Ricardo, works his cooking magic in the within-arms-reach kitchen on the other side of the wall. The bathroom is immaculate, there is a large-party room in the back, and the music is upbeat, complimenting the sense of life and freshness in the place. I have been back twice since and at night, Cafe Cortadito is just as charming, with an added sense of class after dark, the dim lighting putting you at ease, making quite sure it’s a night you won’t soon forget.
As far as the cuisine is concerned, absolutely everything I have had is outrageously delicious. All of the food is full of flavor. The meat is as moist as the fresh fruit they serve. Their black beans and plantains are simple but delectable. Personally, I would have to recommend the green plantain-encrusted snapper and the avocado-pineapple salad with red onions and Spanish cheese. For drinks, be sure to try the champagne sangria or the champagne mojitos. Trust me, any time you spend here is a time to keep it festive. The desserts are a dream (coconut flan, triple leche cake, rice pudding, guava and cream cheese) and whatever you do, don’t forget to top it all off with a cortadito in a glass mug. Celebrate the flavor of your life at Cafe Cortadito.
In the last week and a half, I think I sent out a grand total of 13 letters and/or packages. I had some nights free and I decided to get back in the habit of keeping in touch via the good ol’ United States Postal Service. I did make a few cell phone calls as well, lest I lead you to believe that I’m totally antique.
During my letter-writing frenzy, I came across a large bag of assorted small pictures and whatnots I had wanted to use for making my own stationery. I scanned a lot of them first, though, so that I have the images backed up and will be able to make multiples. While writing my letters out, I was listening to a bunch of cassettes I’ve owned for at least a year but have not had the pleasure of hearing yet. I bought all of these cassettes at various thrift stores, however, and some of them were warbly and not pleasant to listen to, so I threw them out and made stationery out of their delightful album art. They’re nothing too special, but I was happy with them. Here are some of the results:
Lionel Richie and Andrae Crouch stationery; Space Familia stationery
I know this might be hard to deal with, but the title of this post is what occurred last evening. Don’t think. Just click.
There is a Jewish auction of sorts going on at the synagogue on the corner of my street. I can hear the bids getting higher from my window. Now they are having an Israeli-rock dance party and the kids are taking turns at the mic. Sometimes you don’t have to go very far to be reminded, ‘There’s no place like Brooklyn.’
Seven Victorian amber-glowing lampshades scattered across the stage? Check. Five giant smoke machines pumping out fog like it’s midnight in Londontown? Got it. Three laser transmitters with corresponding reflective mirrors? No problem. Two barrels of smoldering incense swirling into the sky and into the nostrils of a crowd at the second-night-in-a-row sold out show at Webster Hall? You bet. The one and only Fever Ray? Yes, indeed…And I thought either Crystal Castles or Of Montreal’s show from their last tour would have reigned supreme in my “Craziest Concerts I Have Ever Been To” category. After last night, I’m not so sure.
Fever Ray is the solo project of Karin Dreijer Andersson, the lead singer in the duo, The Knife. Similar to The Knife’s sound, the only way I can think to describe Fever Ray’s music is ‘Scandinavian calypso-gothtronica.’ When the Fever Ray live band walked out onstage to their instruments, I could barely even see them because the smoke in the room was so thick. When the green lasers darted out from the stage over the audience, though, I caught a vision of the performers—painted faces, misshapen head-wear, and curious garmentry. Ambient minor chords hovered in the stillness, floating with the fog. In the middle of the stage sat what looked like a large bundle of fur with antlers. As the lights grew stronger, I doubted my own guesses, but then, at the first note of her deep, dark, shrill voice, all of my suspicions were confirmed: The bundle of fur was Karin. It looked like she was huddled inside of a dome-shaped frame and there was a reindeer pelt draped over it, serving as her cloak—a radioactive reindeer pelt, emitting multi-colored laser streams. Then, sharply but not jarringly, the drums kicked in, and at the beat of every hit, a different set of lamps flashed their light. This enchanted audio/visual exhibit gave me the extraordinarily strange sensation that I was witnessing a Siberian Druid ritual at the brink of an incandescent full moon. It was a radiant spectacle, to be sure.
Fever Ray’s liturgy moved forward as Karin dismissed her furry cape and drew closer to the front of the stage. Still, there was no audience interaction, not even thank-you’s after applause, and yet, somehow, I felt completely connected to the concert through the use of light, smoke, and shadows. The laser and lamp effects morphed throughout the setlist, accompanying each song in particular, peculiar, perfectly-planned-out movements.
Karin lifted her hands when she sang and stared through the ceiling as though under a spell. The guitarist’s riffs were tight and pristine even amidst double-duty on the laptop, tacking on different effects and textures to Karin’s voice. The drummer banged on bongos and congas and chimes (oh my!) and even helped out with some of the singing. The keyboardist constantly provided atmospheric ambiance to fill the space, setting the ethereal moods. At the climax of the show, on a song with a droning rhythm followed by an epic build-up, the lasers formed a pyramid, matching the black outline of a triangle drawn on Karin’s ghostly pale forehead. Following the example of the guitarist, the audience proceeded to put their hands up in the air and brought them together to form triangles. When the build-up broke loose, the beats came in bold and, in response, the audience danced and davened, sang along, and beat their hands together in a primitive trance.
Karin put the pelt back on for one more song and then they all drifted offstage. There was no encore. And there was no encore needed. There was nothing that should have been taken away or added to this performance. It was a service of sorts, really, and I think Fever Ray was quite aware of that. When a service is over, it’s just over. If they had come back to the stage, it would have ruined the mystical aura they were so successful in creating in the first place. You do not depart like a nomad back into the woods somewhere and then reappear for two more songs. You recess slowly into the darkness and you travel to who knows where before you are ever seen from or heard from again—and rumor has it that Fever Ray will not be seen again, that this tour was a one-time-only event, which, in retrospect, makes the whole night feel that much more enchanted.
I’ve been listening to She’s So Unusual by Cyndi Lauper a lot as of late. The album opener, “Money Changes Everything” has got to be one of the best forgotten gems of the decade, having been overshadowed, like almost everything else in Lauper’s career, by the ‘always fun but almost always feels overplayed no matter what the last time you heard it was’ hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”. Another great track is “When You Were Mine” which I had heard before, unaware that it was a cover of a Prince song. Actually, most of Cyndi’s songs are covers, although she did co-write “Time After Time”. Other notable facts that I learned in the past week are that Cyndi got the ordained minister, Little Richard–yes, of “Tutti Frutti” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” fame, to perform her wedding ceremony, that Cyndi is from Queens, New York, and that she named her firstborn son Declan after Elvis Costello, since apparently, that is Elvis’ real first name (and the name of one of Maeve’s uncles or cousins or someone else who is Irish). Lastly, as if she couldn’t get any cooler, not only did Cyndi Lauper have the most memorable song from Goonies– Steven Spielberg chose her personally to be responsible for overseeing the entire Goonies soundtrack. She was the true teen queen of the early 80’s.
Ever wonder what Robert Smith of The Cure looked like before his rat’s nest of gargantuan proportions? I always wondered. Since I’ve been listening to their first album a whole lot recently, though, I’ve been wondering more and more. Today, I decided to check it out. Here he is as a fresh-faced, short-haired lad–albeit a lad wearing pink pants– performing in France with The Cure in the late ’70s, when they had not yet grown out from their post-punk roots into gothy poppy Cureness.
