Winter Just Won't Stop

aaaaand winter just won't stop.  more snow and super coldness.

supplies for our Hawaiian party

SPAM musubi is Hawaiian.  Lost the photos on my camera but this thing got piled high with them.

vanilla and chocolate egg creams from Farmacy on carroll gardens.  If this is what an egg cream is then don't sign me up.  It was like drinking dirty ice cream water.

I got this sun sniper tripod mount camera strap thingy last christmas but never posted it.  similar to the other one i had but less parts so maybe the metal won't wear away and break and leave my camera rolling in the street.  the whole thing swivels on a big ball bearing.

Chinatown haul.  $37.  If it looks like an american person went shopping then sorry, I don't have time to roast in-season chestnuts, boil all kinds of bones, or any of the other chinatown stuffs I wish I could buy.

even in the cold there are cat parties on a cold tin roof.  Yes it's the rare one day when its sunny in this photo but they also hang out on cold days too.  The coldest of days no, they're not stupid.

Smith 9th Streets station

the view from 5th ave and 15th street Brooklyn.

sausage platter at Der Kommissar, an Austrian bar in south slope.  They're house made Sriacha sauce is super hot.  It's hard to find super hot sauces and that one is blazing!

off of 9th street next to Lowes

A sad Lowe's parking lot.  The BQE and all its traffic elevated in the sky, the sanitation department in the back.  Not a corner of new york you need to be hanging out in unless you're painting your apartment

Sr. and Jr.

Buttermilk, another bar in south slope.  mini shuffleboard bowling amongst other games.  It seem like all bar on 5th ave in Park Slope/south slope have pinball machines. and people actually play them.  We saw a real pinball wizard and some kind of pinball team.

a guns n' roses pinball machine

complete with a gun and rose ball launcher.

onto more games.  Jen actually won

kickin' us when we're down.  Winter is such an a$$hole.

This is what it looks like when you get something back from the Canon repair facility in New Jersey.  My 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens started giving a Err 01 at any aperture other than f/2.8 and they said it would be $100 bucks plus tax and shipping to fix it and it's a $150 lens so even the guy recommended buying new.  I hate being that guy that just buys new but I had to on this one.

and slightly chuffed that I finally got a wall map.  Wish it was bigger.  Random scissors taped to the wall for size.  Still looking for the perfect map in the meantime.  This is a Rand McNally classic map, stereographic projection.  Aren't my blog posts so fun these days?  Stereographic projection.  

Winter Illustration Roundup

Trying to do illustrations of the books I read.  Since that is only a few a year I thought it was manageable.  Fresh Off the Boat, a memoir by Eddie Huang about growing up Chinese/Taiwanese American in America.  There's a lot of hip-hop, basketball, and 90s references that I get because we're the same age.  Here he's facing off against an old school stereotype of Chinese people (and in most of the world all asians get lumped into the same pile so i'm included too), Charlie Chan.

my annual painted Japanese new year's card.  2015 is the year of the sheep

tax return slayer for the Boston Globe sunday business section cover

women's equality at the Davos world economic forum for the sunday Wall Street Journal

slow in flight wi-fi for the New York Times

giving your portfolio a tune up for New Orleans magazine

my contribution to the Je Suis Charlie movement after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris.  It was featured on the Atlantic Monthly website.

personal illustration of an amusing scene in Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast.  Ford Madox Ford "cuts" who he believes to be Hilaire Belloc for no other reason than he's a cad.

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.