February Freeze

One of the worst winters in recent history marches on

forgot to post this a while ago I got this Onkyo TX-NR636 AV receiver.  It was $500 but it's an investment.  It's also just a "mid-level" receiver.  It was the best reviewed receiver of 2014 and they say it's the best future proof receiver, meaning it will stand the test of new technology time better than any others.  Receivers aren't very sexy so here's a shot of the back so you can see how insane it is.

These are from last year but it's the same miserable snowy New York.  My mom wanted some photos of Brody and this is all I have because the rest are him running around like a big bear.

On the west side of Manhattan:

1. IAC Building
2. The IAC Building, InterActiveCorp's headquarters located at 550 West 18th Street on the northeast corner of Eleventh Avenue in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a Frank Gehry-designed building that was completed in 2007. Wikipedia
4. Opened: 2007
5. Architectural style: Deconstructivism
6. Architect: Frank Gehry

 

Looking for maps at Argosy

a birthday gift from Foo, Hudson four grain bourbon whiskey.  Good stuff, and a few of these lead to adventures that saturday night at Barbès

Barbès in Park Slope is a cool little music place.  Low ceiling

New York fashion week events.  Some thing for Teva.  I particularly enjoy the free booze and food that keeps on coming.

A Ted Baker event at Aire Ancient Baths.

they all had these electronic string instruments

Winter this year sucks.  So much people are wearing straight up snow suits around.

feeling a little tall are we?

As a cheap and lazy bastard I ordered 2 pairs of Puma faas 700 v2 running shoes in gross methyl blue-lime-white to qualify for free shipping and not have to shop for running shoes for a while.  The colors are gross but how else are they gonna be on sale for $50?  Ran in a lot of snow today and they seem fine so far.

New gear!  Unfortunately my 40mm f/2.8 pancake lens repair cost would be $40 less than buying a new one so in the spirit of America and modern times I bought new instead of getting the old fixed.  Also got a B+W 52mm polarizing filter.  $80 but as they say it's a shame to have an expensive camera and then put a crappy piece of glass in front of it and ruin everything.  Also got a 5 in 1 reflector set that has gold, silver, black, white, and diffuser surfaces.

the reflector twists and turns and folds down to the size of a small pizza.

looked up the F word in french on google translate on my iphone and it came back with p*****.  FYI it's putain, which I found when living there doesn't seem as bad as the english F word, the percentage of the population that uses putain in most situations is a lot higher than peeps using the F word here.  For example I wouldn't say F*** this soap is expensive to a cashier but they would say putain this soap is expensive to a cashier in France.

New York on Ice

to set the tone, New York and all of the east coast even down to florida have been having record breaking cold days this winter.

Jen took me out for birthday dinner and a surprise.  A group of people sat down next to us and I overheard them say they have 2 extra tickets to the Jack White concert with Run the Jewels opening.  I told Jen oh man that is the one concert this year that I would want to see.  Me and bob tried to get tickets but they were sold out already.  I figured we would be going to some broadway show or something after dinner but then we started walking towards madison square garden.  How lucky was Jen that she got us tix for this concert and the people next to us at dinner happened to have two extra tix just stoking my despair?  Run the Jewels had the best hip hop album on 2014 but it was sad, the garden was less than half full for them but by the time Jack White went on it was full.  His encore set was even longer than original set.  It rocked.  Then we met bob for drinks.  Somehow the photos from our Hawaiian housewarming/my birthday party got deleted.  There were only a few photos taken anyway and then the best pic was the pile of SPAM musubis that we made.  It was a calm and adult like birthday.  Everyone barely drank and they went home by 1am.

So photos that are missing before this day that I can remember is from the MOTH story hour at the bellhouse and it's a show they play on NPR where people tell stories.  The bell house is very close to our house and it was cool to see live.  Here we are in Crown Heights but it looks like we're walking through Hoxton in London

This bar Covenhoven has a huge section of brews from everywhere to buy and carry out of drink in.  Pretty cool place

When did printers get so high tech?  I got this printer from Illustrator Lily Padula and it has blinking lights to show the empty ink cartridges and makes espressos and flat whites too even.

we were in some music video thing

Whiskey time and Norman's Kil.  The winner of the night was Lagavulin 16 year from the Scottish Isle of Islay

keeping it in the islands with Talisker and Ledaig scotch

delux-if-ied some Shin Black ramen even with a pat of butter on top.  mushrooms, baby spinach, scallions, soft boiled egg, onions and you got a meal goin on.  It's pretty delish

Fashion week, went to some stuff with jen.  This is at one of Mel's events for Otte

went to a thing at John Varvatos on Bowery which used to be the original CBGBs.  He's a big rock fan I guess so he encased a lot of the wall in glass to preserve all the gig posters and general crap on there.

their thing that night was moonshine and they made it into all these flavors of DISGUSTINGLY undrinkably sweet moonshine drinks.

apparently the Struts are John Varvatos favorite band and they played that night.  I'm not a fan

FDNY

the night ended at one of Cori's denim designer co-workers swank apartment.  They had many bottle of fancy tequila.  After two big glasses of that on top of all the other drinks including moonshine, Jen was a puddle on the floor so I scooped her home. 

somehow I didn't have a crippling hangover so I was able to go for a run.  I still wear the same running jacket I got in Japan, you can see the shoulder that hit the windshield of the taxi that hit me.

the poor guy isn't doing so well, and it's valentines day.

sometimes love is 3 pounds of beef for beouf bourguignon a la Julia Child.  The rest of the day was shot because it takes all day to make this

a little older and a little wiser is it was less intense making this this year.  It was still a tough battle in the kitchen but we won.

was part of a group show at the Museum of Sex.  It was just a big party

still fashion week, we went to Nancy's thing, designer Michael DePaulo's evening gowns inside the Carlton Hotel.

at this point these living mannequins had been standing there for 2 and a half hours.  They're thrilled to have another wanker with a camera oogling them you can tell

on to Beer dork hangout, Torst in Greenpoint for too many craft beers

pffff, as usual just a puff of smoke from Jen Yoo

V day present, look who's a member of the Bklyn Larder Cheese Club! (for 3 months).  This is a lot of cheese.  1.5 pounds of 3 cheeses every month.

a party at Maison Kistuné and the end of fashion week.  And if you didn't know New York has been having record breaking cold days this winter.  It sucks super bad.