Posts Tagged ‘ d42 ’

RyanAir: Hell on Earth, or Just a Cheap Way to Get Around Europe?

d42 is currently playing expat in Germany, and while there, she had the opportunity to try out RyanAir, the airline I always wondered about due to the fact that you can fly from one country to another for less than you would pay for a Greyhound ride to another state. They even offer free flights. “What’s the catch?” I thought to myself, and then d42 went to Stockholm…

RyanAirPlane

Here’s the article my boyfriend and I would love to write:

Everyone can easily summon a fairly detailed image of their conception of Hell On Earth(TM). In fact, for many, this is a serious pastime, and one they dedicate countless hours to perfecting. For some, it’s sitting in a boardroom listening to the droning of a middle-management lackey, for others, it might be toiling in the malodorous, dimly lit kitchen of a scummier-than-average White Castle. For me it is, without a doubt, languishing for hours in a flightless airplane with no hope of exit, rescue, or a decent tuna sandwich. Friends, this past weekend was like a delightful subclause, within the Dark Prince of Hell’s parenthesis. And that parenthesis’ name is RyanAir. We traveled for hours to an out of the way airport misleadingly named “Hamburg (Lübeck)”– Lübeck is only close to Hamburg by way of some mad cartographer’s artistic license. We waited in a tent– a tent!– for our decrepit spruce moose. We crammed ourselves into acrid-smelling pleather “seats,” wrestled with our seatbelts, […] Continue reading →

2009
09/24
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CATEGORY
Travel
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Wednesday: Reading. Friday: Rocking– With AFP

Show date: June 5, 2009
Venue: Highline Ballroom
Bands: Amanda Palmer, The Lisps, Emilyn Brodsky, Abby Ahmad

palmerself

AFP''s blurry self-portrait before the show. Due to battery fail, this is all the photography you're gettin'. And it ain't even ours.

The night opened up with Abby Ahmad, a one-woman vocal powerhouse. She appeared on stage as a little surprise (she was unbilled), but quickly won me over with her fun, rhythmic guitar and her amazing voice. Deep and rich, she had to back at least a yard away from the mic in order to belt out some stanzas without blowing speaker cones or ear drums. Sadly she only played three songs, but they ran the gamut from emotional (i.e., recovering from a breakup) to tongue-in-cheek (i.e., reminder that a woman can have fun between the sheets all by herself). Continue reading →

2009
07/03
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Music
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The Watchmen Lives Up to Expectations

d42 having murderous opinions

d42 having murderous opinions (click it to read them)

Late one unremarkable Thursday eve, I met up with several compatriots on a mission. We first acquired food from a Local Establishment, where, having ordered a ginger ale, I was informed that I could have *only one* small ginger ale, and there would be *no refills.* The waitress was very clear on this. Cherry Coke, however, flowed like the Nile.

After food was safely in our bellies, we moved on to the Cinema, where the line was already forming. In a rare display of foresight, the IMAX theater here developed an assigned seating system, so there was no need for a stampede as long as you bought your ticket early enough. Our seats were good, close to the back and on the right. Continue reading →

2009
03/10
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CATEGORY
Movies
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The Hulk Really is Incredible

A text message arrives early on Monday from an inside man: Wanna see the Hulk premier tonight? Since the movie isn’t officially released until Friday, how could I say no?

The Zeigfeld had nary an empty seat when we finally arrived– luckily seats were assigned. Ours were in the rear on the right, but afforded quite a good view. Before the showing began, a representative from the Marvel Board of Directors, Marvel chief Joe Quesada, and two of the producers stood and said a few words about the movie and about the history of Marvel’s return to silver screen glory, beginning with the first X-Men movie through to today. They carefully avoided saying anything bad about a certain previous attempt to bring Bruce Banner to the big screen, but instead chose to look to the future by going over the upcoming Marvel blockbusters-in-waiting (Iron Man 2, Thor, The Avengers… etc).

The Incredible Hulk begins with a really well made flickering montage of news reports, flashbacks, and article clippings giving enough history of the tribulations of Bruce Banner to orient a casual nerd like myself. The movie starts off with Bruce Banner traveling desperately far and wide looking for a cure for the Gamma poisoning that transforms him into a huge and vicious monstrosity. Continue reading →

2008
06/11
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CATEGORY
Music
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NYC Restaurant and Foodservice Expo: A Gateway Drug


Random picture of things done with sugar to get you in the right frame of mind.

It was March 9th, and our trip to the Jacob K. Javits center on Manhattan’s west side began with an early morning phone call from ETL: “Hey, what time do you think it is?” I chewed my cereal and considered this for a moment. I glanced at the clock—it clearly said 8:36. Waaaaaaiit a minute… ETL’s pregnant silence was like a claw hammer in my heart. FUCK– Daylight savings time! The one event we were looking forward to—the Press Pastry Tasting—evaporated before our now one-unscheduled-hour-older eyes.

Undaunted, we hustled downtown as fast as the subway would take us. The Javits center on this fine March day hosted the International Restaurant & Foodservice Show on its lower level. We obtained our press passes after some delay, and after cutting a rather self-important CNN reporter (“you don’t need my name, just put down CNN”) in line, and headed into the domain of the restauranteur.

It was laid out in much the same way as any other convention, rows and rows lined with innumerable booths of vendors hawking their wares and services. A great many of them were restaurant technologies and gadgets to make foodservice faster and more efficient. We photographed many things, though apparently, it’s not permitted to photograph artsy porcelain service sets. Photos of these are issued by the vendor only…

The show also hosted the International Pastry Arts Competition—the very event whose delectable wares we were denied by the tyranny of railroad timetables—whose theme this year was “Under the Sea.” Very prom-esque! We made a beeline straight for this area and were presented with such amazing works of gravity-defying confectionary that words cannot do them justice. I will allow ETL to provide imagery for your drooling pleasure. Continue reading →

2008
03/23
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CATEGORY
Conventions/Festivals
Food
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Four Star Secrets Tolerable Only to Foodies

service-included-cover.jpgService Included: Four Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter, by Phoebe Damrosch, is probably in my top most misleadingly named books of all time. When I first read the title, I assumed it would be a gossip-filled spelunk into the dark dinner-discussion secrets of those rich enough to drop over a thousand dollars on one meal. Something like this has it’s appeal to us hoi polloi—lord knows I would jump at the chance to sit for a meal at a 4-star restaurant (but I would probably want to take a crash course in etiquette first), and reading a book about the people who take what Thomas Keller dreams up for granted is not without its draw.

What this fanciful Imagineering leads me to is simply that this memoir is not about the secrets of the insanely rich—Damrosch reveals nary an eavesdrop— instead it focuses on the author’s personal bumbling journey through waitressing, life, and love. The title instead highlights the backdrop against which we see her life unfolding.

Damrosch began waitressing in a trendy Brooklyn café and sundry other eating establishments. When it opened, she landed a job at the Manhattan offshoot of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry, Per Se, by pure chance. From the moment she first dons the Armani Per Se tuxedo, Damrosch’s entire life begins to center around the restaurant. Don’t get me wrong—working at Per Se is clearly not the same as working at Heliopolis Greek Style Family Diner. For one thing, the wait staff goes through a several-week training period, during which they get a crash course in everything from the varieties of sparkling versus still water, to the history of the Central Park overlook that Per Se enjoys. They have 401(k) plans, health and dental benefits, and make enough money to afford living in Manhattan. The job demands close attention to detail and significant study, which I have to admit I never expected, and which I ended up finding fascinating. Continue reading →

2007
12/04
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CATEGORY
Literature
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Velocity of Demon Spunk Equals G Times WAR Squared

Friday, November 2, 2007. Oh. Man.

GWAR

The Rockstar Energy Drink Viva La Bands tour, sponsored by Bam Margera (of Jackass), featured Vains of Jenna, an interesting new sleaze rock band from Sweden as opening act, and was headlined by Cradle of Filth, who are pretty uniformly awesome. The tour also featured another band, one that I had heard of, but never seen, and not really listened to. They’re a famously outrageous band, so I had a little bit of a notion of what to expect; I knew it would be fun.

I was so unprepared. I was more unprepared than the proverbial Polish cavalry riding in to face the tanks of WWI. I was more unprepared than you before your Insert-High-Stress-Standardized-Test-Here. I was more unprepared than an extremely unprepared thing.

That last band was GWAR. Continue reading →

2007
11/09
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CATEGORY
Music
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Decomposing Bodies and the Ego that Tends Them

book jacketAccording to the book jacket, Dr. Bill Bass is a “pioneer in forensic anthropology, [he] created the world’s first laboratory dedicated to the study of human decomposition—three acres of land on a hillside in Tennessee where human bodies are left to the elements.” The wide array of data collected on the Body Farm, as this hillside was dubbed, has opened up hundreds of paths in the dense forest of cause-of-death investigations. New forensic specializations formed and grew at the Body Farm, from forensic entomology, forensic art, and forensic chemistry, to molecular anthropology.

Each chapter of Beyond the Body Farm, written by Dr. Bill Bass and journalist Jon Jefferson, addresses a different case, or aspect of a case, that Bass has personally worked on and solved. They are overwhelmingly murder cases, but accidental deaths are also examined. Bass begins each chapter with a brief discussion of the difficulties such an investigation would have faced without forensic anthropology’s research forays into just such a possibility, and several times, goes off onto a rather unrelated tangential anecdote, including topics so outside the scope of the book (such as his marriage) that the reader must stop, confused, and wonder why their time is being wasted. Typically his investigations require special experimentation and innovative approaches, which are invariably the most interesting parts. In this respect the book is very enlightening. Continue reading →

2007
10/09
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Literature
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Restaurant Week Reviews Part 3: Dinner at Adä

The atmosphere at Adä is muted and elegant, with buff colored marble floors, brass accessories, and tasteful Indian-inspired artwork. Apparently an Indian-French fusion, Adä’s fare is organic and includes ingredients not usual to Indian traditional cuisine, (creme brulee, mesclun greens and goat cheese appear on the menu). The restaurant was just beginning its dinner hour, and, among the first to arrive, we were seated in the windowed foyer area. The wait staff was attentive and brought menus and drinks quickly.

The prix fixe selection was fairly wide, with four or five options for each course. I selected the Aloo-Tikki, which is a pan-seared potato pancake which came with carmelized bananas, a small mound of peas, and some chutney. It was crispy and mildly spiced, and the sweet bananas with the fresh-flavored coriander chutney were an excellent combination.

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2007
07/25
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CATEGORY
Food
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Restaurant Week Reviews Part 2: Dinner at the Giorgio’s of Gramercy

Giorgio’s of Gramercy, on 21st street near Broadway, is a long, narrow and dimly lit affair, appointed in earth tones and decorated with somewhat disturbing abstract watercolors. The tables feature small tea light candles and white tablecloths, and curtains and beads hanging from the ceiling make the space cozy and warm.

The staff is pleasant, professional and removed; they do not hover too much, nor do they neglect. Kitchen sounds emanate from the back of the restaurant, and early in the evening (while I waited for my companion), the chef brought out a plate of the night’s special (fish in a spicy remoulade of some kind) for the staff to sample so they would know how to describe it later. When we were seated, we were treated to a plate of crispy bruchetta and offered beverages, the menus, and the wine list.
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2007
07/24
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Food
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