Roosevelt Island... Who Knew!?

A good friend of mine is in town and is staying with her brother, who just so happens to live on Roosevelt Island. So, after scoring some free Godiva chocolate bars, we headed over there for dinner. I'd never been there before, so I really had no idea what to expect. Here are a few of the more interesting things that I learned.

• Roosevelt Island has a president. This president is not voted in to office, but rather installed by the governor of New York.
• Roosevelt Island's only street is aptly named Main Street.
• Main Street has all the charm of a 1980's junior college.
• Roosevelt Island has a school. I don't know why this surprised me. Perhaps I'd always thought Roosevelt was something like the Hawaiian Island of Ni'ihau where the ways of ancient New Yorkers were still practiced.
• You can actually walk to the Costco in Queens from Roosevelt Island. It's really close.
• The tram ride back into the city was nice, though not as impressive as I'd hoped.
• And finally, there must be a high pirate population on Roosevelt Island, as the local liquor store is called "The Grog Shop."

Wow. After a list that incredibly awesome, what more can I say?

Griffey is Spiffey

I was cruising through the Seattle P-I looking for news on whether or not the Sonics will be leaving Seattle, and saw they had an article about Ken Griffey, Jr.'s return to Seattle (unfortunately as a member of the opposing team). I always wanted to make a banner to take to the Kingdome that said "Griffey is Spiffey" with a picture of him with his hat on backwards and a bow-tie. I guess this is as close as I'll ever come. Anyway, I thought I would share a few of the photos that were included. You can find the original story here (at least for the time being). So, prepare yourselves for a trip down baseball memory lane (or just browse away and wait for me to post something a little more relevant, I don't care).

I remember these uni's, but for the life of me, I can't remember Griffey ever wearing one. This must have been a "throwback" night, since he started with the M's in '89, and they stopped using these in '87 in favor of what I like to call the "boring" uni (see below).

Ahh... what a good sight. Why is baseball so nostalgic for me? I remember waiting to see as a kid, and talking Junior's HR's for days afterward on the playground. Sigh.

I actually met Griffey when I was about the age of these kids (I was in 5th grade at the time). Props to this kid for planting the bunny ears on him. All I did was shake his hand. I haven't washed it since.

My best friend had this poster when I was a kid. In case you are wondering, it says, "Griffey, The Next Generation" and shows him and his dad.

Mmm... the Ken Griffey Jr. bar. These were all over my elementary school. You had arrived if you brought one for lunch. I don't think I ever arrived. They tasted OK, but they looked kind of freaky (imagine a chocolate face of Ken Griffey Jr. on a baseball card).

Whoa! When did this happen? And who the heck is that on Griffey's left? The world may never know...

Well, I realize this isn't my first trip down M's memory lane, but thanks for humoring me - again.

A night at the Standard

I'd like to dedicate this one to all those hep cats and kittens out there.

Last Saturday was a great night in jazz and I got to be there for it. Hmm... where do I start...

How about with a roll call?

This is Jane. We lived in the same apartment complex (aptly named Brownstone) right before moving to NYC. Coincidence? Perhaps. Moving on...
Next we have me. You may be noticing that the photos look a bit blurry. I'm pretty sure that it has something to do with the extremely hip vibes that were floating through the room, left over from the previous set. So, what I'm saying is, don't blame the photographer, blame the musicians.
So, here's the man himself, Mr. Joey DeFrancesco. Mr. DeFrancesco plays the jazz organ (more specifically, the Hammond B-3), and he does it extremely well. You can't see it, but there is not bass player in this group (just drums, organ, guitar and sax). There is no need because on top of playing with both hands, and controlling the volume with one foot, he is playing the bass line with his other!
By now, you can see that the hip vibes leftover from the first set had joined up with the newly created hip vibes and began seriously messing with my camera. The big blur on the right is a sax player named George Coleman. He's 72, which is old, and has played with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles and B.B. King, to name a few. So, a you can guess, he was pretty good.

More evidence that the hipness in the room was overwhelming. I guess at this point I should mention that when I say hip, I'm not talking about that weak stuff they brew up in Williamsburg and peddle on the L train, I'm talking about the real stuff. If you don't know what I'm talking about, drop in on your local jazz club.


Finally, I thought I'd put up a picture of this guy. Sorry, I don't remember his name. He was good. I could perhaps beat him at Guitar Hero, but somehow I just don't think he'd care. All in all, it was a great night, and a good way to get out of the house.

P.S. - I hear that during the final set, the hipness vibes got so strong that people's cameras began exploding.

Another short post

I've been lazy, but hopefully, this will make up for some of that. Make sure to check out Peter Pan's Homepage and the fashions section.

Wow. 100 posts.

And to celebrate, check this out.

You can make this baby famous

Just got an email from a good friend of mine and I thought, why not put this on the blog? You see, she has a daughter and a husband, and the husband took a photo of the daughter, and now the daughter could be on a bottle of Jones Soda. Whew! Got that? Well, all that needs to be done now is get votes for that photo. So, if you feel so inclined, click here and make this whole crazy dream a reality. Go on, you know you want to.

Nerd Alert

So, my fellow mac nerds, WWDC and the infamous keynote happened yesterday. There are a few interesting things that happened - mostly new features that are going to be integrated into the new operating system. It's not earth-shattering, but it's worth taking note of. It makes me wonder if my trusty 3-year-old PowerBook is going to be in need of replacement...

Factoids

For your consideration, here are a few random facts that I have compiled over the last few weeks.

NYC is massive: To give you an idea of just how big it is, take the city of Seattle and make it about 3.5x bigger (or, if you like, take Salt Lake City and make it 3x bigger) - that's the land mass of NYC. Then, take all of the residents of Washington State AND all the residents of Utah, and move them in to that area (wouldn't that be a fun political climate?). That's how many people live in the 5 boroughs. If you want to add the metro area in you would have to add the entire populations of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and Colorado to the WA/UT mix and move us all into an area somewhat smaller than the state of New Jersey. Huge.

Harry Potter is older than me: So, in anticipation of the new book, I've been rereading the last two books, and as I was using the internet to fill in a few details I had forgotten, I was informed that Harry's birthday is July 31, 1980, making him about 4 months older than me. This page will explain it better than I can.

Factoid #3: You might think that I have another factoid, but I don't. I only added this because two factoids are hardly worth posting, and I worked too hard on that first one to not post it.

More Guitar Hero news

OK, so first of all, sorry it's been so long since my last post. Hopefully this will make up for some of that. Second of all, there have been two more additions to the GH3 setlist:

Evenflow, by Pearl Jam
Lay Down, by Priestess

Cool. You can check out more about that here.

OK, so more news... Battle Mode. This might just change things a bit. Feelings might get hurt.

And finally, the new controller. It looks pretty weak in the photos, but I guess that's because they don't want to show off their pretty, new snap-on faceplates. Did I mention that it has the potential for custom necks? My vote would be for one with two sets of buttons, with the second further down the neck for when you are really rocking out. So far this is only for the Xbox360, so who knows what we'll get on the PS2...