I’m writing this from the borough of Brooklyn, in New York City. I’m visiting my brother, his wife and my new niece.
Flying out here was an all-day adventure yesterday. It was my first experience with JetBlue, who are significantly better than Southwest Airlines, my previous experience with low-cost airlines. Airline travelers, though, are still exasperating: The odds that an airplane would take back off with 40 adults still on board are rather slim — “Sorry, but we have to make it to Rochester by 9:17!” — but the way people claw and scratch so they can be the first to stand in the aisle and wait to deplane, you’d think it was an everyday thing.
I’ve been in California so long, I realized that I’d likely forgotten a lot of the things that made California California and conversely had forgotten a lot of things about the east coast, including New York, where I visited quite a bit growing up and lived briefly in the late 1990s. The first thing that struck me after deplaning was “oh yes, they have humidity.” It’s apparently better than it has been recently, but after years of living in the Southern California desert, it was quite noticeable.
The other thing was how many dark-haired people are in New York City. I think me, my sister-in-law and my niece all under one roof makes this the most blonde household in New York this weekend.
But I’ve accomplished one of my goals for the weekend already: I had Chinese food. One of the greatest things about New York is that there’s a great Chinese place on pretty much every block. Bafflingly, this does not seem to be true in Southern California, despite an equally large Chinese population.
I’ll also be visiting the World Trade Center this weekend, visiting the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company and getting a Reuben. Once, when we lived in North Hollywood, a sandwich shop tried to put lettuce and tomato on a Reuben for me. I’ve pretty much given up on them on the West Coast since that point.
I also mentioned that doing to a Reuben would get them shot in much of New York, and rightly so.
CMT has a list of the top drinking songs of all time. Despite normally being very country music phobic, my fraternity played a pretty astonishing number of those (of those that were out at the time) when I was in college. I don’t think there was a party where we didn’t hear “Family Tradition” or “Friends in Low Places,” even if it was mixed in with 2 Live Crew.
In addition to being incredibly well-designed from a challenge standpoint, the new World of Warcraft dungeon, Zul’Gurub, marks the first time that the WoW level designers have taken away the walls as a visual element in a dungeon. They’re still there, effectively — huge cliffs with narrow slopes between areas keep content in discrete areas as usual — but it makes a huge difference visually. Not only is this place a ton of fun, it looks great, too.
Hats off, guys.
(If you look carefully at the picture, you can see a dead night elf rogue, which is always nice, too.)
Not included in the latest patch notes is mention of the holiday going on. Check outside Orgrimmar or Ironforge for a new quest. Given the feast nature of the holiday and its absence from the patch notes, I suspect we accidentally got the Thanksgiving event early, but we’ll see. Still, neat stuff:
OK, I’m told the Harvest Festival, with its references to “fallen heroes” is about remembering 9/11. That makes sense and is a class move.
State Senator George C. Runner, Jr., stopped by the Daily Press in Victorville yesterday morning to meet with reporters and editors. Reporter Miguel Gonzalez has a story on what Runner talked in today’s paper.
I interviewed Runner Monday afternoon and an article following up on his letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear in the next edition of the Star.
This is just annoying:
Four out of five Americans say they think too many reality shows are on the air, according to an AP–TV Guide poll. Only 4 percent of respondents said there were not enough.
Half of Americans believe there are too many crime shows on television. The longtime staple of TV dramas has proliferated with the success of franchises such as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “Law & Order.”
Guys, change the freaking channels. There’s 72 different Law & Order shows because people keep watching them. Ditto reality shows — if you weren’t giggling over Donald Trump firing people all the last two years, we wouldn’t have Martha Stewart doing the same thing this year.
Of all the new shows introduced last year, “CSI: New York” has the most people looking forward to its return. “Desperate Housewives,” twice as popular with women as it is with men, came in second.
OK, now people are just making stuff up. As much as I wanted to like it, the NYC CSI is almost unwatchable.
As my mother used to always ask me, when I was watching a show I didn’t like, are your arms broken, people?
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