New York City 2009
Monica and I find the Paley Center for the Arts in midtown Manhattan. A well dressed man asks whether we are here for the film, then gives us our will call tickets. First, we claim third row seats, then we visit the Stephen Spielberg gallery which features complimentary wine. This gallery displays posters highlighting the threat of global warming. There is a computer terminal for the purpose of collecting names for an online petition to the United Nations.
The film being screened at the Paley Center will be presented on HBO in the Spring. Eric Metzgar, the film maker, had followed Nicholas Kristof to Congo, where Kristof found starving war victims and interviewed a warlord. Most of the questions went to “Nick”, though someone questioned Eric’s claim of trying to be objective. “There is no way to separate the person from the process. I point the camera where I look.” Two time Pulitzer winner, Kristof, is the hero of the film. He reports on those suffering the most so that people can visualize just how bad these wars are. The Paley audience is the media elite. Pat Mitchell, in charge of the program and the organization, is a dynamo. How did we locate this event? Kristof tweeted.
---
We arrive a little early and have a great Buffalo Wing sandwich. On a small stage in what appears to be an old passenger train at Pete’s Candy store in trendy Williamsburg Brooklyn, we will watch Amy Sohn and Julie Klam read from their books, mostly to other women. Hodgman has Twittered us the event notification. Both live up to impressive resumes. Amy enjoyed Julie relating her Letterman intern memories. Julie was an intern while going to NYU film school and her fictional memories of her real job were great fun. Julie likes Letterman. “He had a five year old. As far as we knew, Letterman was a one woman man.”
I went online to get SNL tickets and Daily Show tickets. We walked on Broadway past a Letterman taping. We stopped at TKTS and might have gone to Broadway shows. But, we somehow avoided the major visual broadcast events for more literary and independent events that popped in front of us or into our cell phones’ text mail.
---
One set of tickets was purchased in advance. That was to see the Les Paul trio at the Iridium. Monica asked, “Would you have gone to see Les Paul if he were still alive?” “Absolutely. I loved to play Les Paul on KALX and would definitely pay to see him.” “Great. Then, we are going for the right reason.”
T.W. Doyle, Les Paul’s engineer, opened with some of his compositions, which I enjoyed, especially as he seemed more like a studio guy than a stage guy.
The Trio told stories about Les. Rusty Paul, his son, sat in the back representing the family. (In early November, nephew Steve Miller performs.) I enjoy the bass player particularly. This is how she happened to join the band:
“Les was a master of dirty jokes. I was playing with two guitarists. Les asked me to stay on the stage and they left. Les said something about girl bass players. I said something about old men. Les said ‘Looks like we have an act.”
Larry Coryell headlined the event, playing a speed guitar version of Bolero. (He talked about how he tried to imitate material that he later discovered that Les Paul recorded at 2x speed. I'm guessing that he came up with this in the 1970's.)
---
We spent two evenings at the Symphony Space at 96th Street, which we learned about from an LED sign that scrolled on Broadway near our hotel. Appearing on the 20th: Frank Rich with Rocco Landesman. Appearing the 21st: Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. We pick up the pamphlets at midnight or so, then go online at the hotel to reserve tickets.
The Leonard Nimoy Thalia, of the Symphony Space, seats one hundred or so and provides plentiful table space for writing. White haired people filter in and join us upon finishing their wine at the adjacent cafe, which has provided WiFi allowing me to play Mafia Wars.
Frank Rich, while engaged, could not be more relaxed. He asks paragraph long questions in perfect rhythm and grammar. NEA head and country music fan, Rocco Landesman, could not be more quotable. Rocco’s father founded the Crystal Palace theater in Saint Louis “because there were no good drinking establishments in the area.” It was a place “where people like Woody Allen would have residencies when they were going through divorces.”
We learn that the NEA has a small budget, $165 million, which is less than New York City’s arts budget and that, nonetheless, Glenn Beck finds ways to criticize them. Someone asks about special NEA programs for women. Rocco says this will not happen as the local organizations funded by the NEA choose how to spend the money, not the federal government.
Landesman pitches that the Arts attract the employees that attract the good companies that make cities thrive. “Arts money is development money.” A second thrust is education. “It turns out that the schools that incorporate art into everything, into math, into science, into everything, have the best test scores.”
Landesman faces little controversy from this polite, older crowd of arts supporters though he notes that his answer about arts spending for women “drew faint applause.”
---
“I’m Levitt. He’s Dubner.”
We have figured this out already. The lanky, stiff guy must be the academic. The formally dressed Al Franken-esque guy must be the writer who first interviewed Levitt in 2003 for the New York Times Magazine.
This is a younger crowd. White haired people are present, but scarce. One would think that given the genial and good-humored Dubner lives a few blocks away, this crowd might be equally friendly to the previous night’s crowd. Judging from the questions, four of the five which could be considered pointed or self serving, this is not the case.
First, Dubner and Levitt describe how they met. This is entertaining and may be found in the forward to SuperFreakonomics. Two of the questions relate to environmental scientists accusing Dubner/Levitt of misquoting them, which they refute here.
“Let’s say we stop putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It will still take 50 to 100 years before warming stops. The temperature will go up six degrees. We are not saying we need to put sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere (about the flow of one garden hose at each pole) to cancel out the warming effect. We are not saying that ocean acidification and carbon dioxide are not issues. But, we do need to talk about geoengineering. That is all.”
A woman plugs her book. Levitt plugs the woman’s book. Dubner gently corrects Levitt: “You learned about the book on prostitution in Chicago 100 years ago from our blog.”
Levitt coins the phrase "carbon crazies" and apologizes as "this is not language that I use elsewhere." As I texted to Facebook friends about our social skills: Monica is Dubner. I'm Levitt.
---
Frank Rich. Nicholas Kristof. Dubner/Levitt. Their data will be solid. Their opinions will be well thought out. Their books will be best sellers.
Dubner/Levitt perhaps seek out the controversy, but are not angry themselves. People currently in their forties and early fifties seem to like to disagree to be disagreeable. “Mensa doofuses” ask impolitic questions, making themselves look unreasonable, where the same questions could be asked politely and reasonably. Heavily represented on television, I will be pleased to see them go out of fashion.
At less than Mensa level, we found Yankees fans in a lower Manhattan bar to be uniformly obnoxious during a playoff game versus the Angels. How obnoxious? They made fun of the Angels’ Nick Adenhart for being dead. People in Jeter uniforms (number 2) may be telling us more than they imagine. It was not just the one comment or the one bar. Because of the Yankee fans in New York, I can no longer imagine myself rooting for the Yankees team, even against the National League.
---
A jean clad woman drinks from a water bottle. “No drinks,” the librarian giving our tour directs. “This is posted on the front door.” Our tour advances to the end of the hall. “No cell phones,” she directs to a man in a suit. “Please move on.”
The New York Public Library has WiFi. The restrooms in the park have attendants who prevent the grounds from turning into camps for the homeless. The library will soon lend. (It has been a research library.) The mission is clear. “No one had heard of this man. He left his estate to the library pointing out that no one had asked his name, but that nonetheless, help had generously been offered. Our mission is to serve everyone.”
More symbolic of our time is the Metropolitan Opera tour guide who looks at Monica’s backpack (actually more of a camera case.) “Of course, since 9-11, we can not allow backpacks backstage of the Met. Do you have a place to store it? No, there is no place to store it here.”
In my imagination, the librarians of NYPL vigorously debate whether water bottles should be allowed. Meanwhile the director of the Lincoln Center prefers not to think about their policies or to discuss them with employees. “Didn’t the Bush Administration warn us about backpacks?”
So much has changed. No one reads books in the Subways. It seems like they did two and four years ago. Dress is much more casual, even on Wall Street. The pace on the sidewalks has slowed as people stare into I-Phones. People in Manhattan do not seem to be as there as they used to be.
---
We did other things. We toured Central Park and its Shakespeare garden on a cold, damp day. We walked the Brooklyn Botanical Center in warmth and sunniness. We found the New York Transit Museum. (Transit in NYC is several light years ahead of local transit.) We often visited the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank, for late night suppers. We ate the Barack Obama and the Willie Dixon (both excellent) at Amy Ruth’s on 116th in Harlem. We wandered and walked with direction, primarily around the Village. We stopped for “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” at the IFC Theater.
We found comedy clubs. The first was the Village Lantern, no cover (they asked for donations), where we went because we were hungry. We had been assured some of the comedians had been validated by TV appearances, though the crowd was outnumbered by the comedians. Their schticks related to identity-- black guy, gay guy, guy from India, Bronx guy. The other comic troop, the Upright Citizens Brigade, was a higher league, still only five dollars. Their improv was quite professional.
Giuliani acknowledged Monica near Central park. (I was staring off into some other reality at the time.) Bill Thompson, Obama endorsed candidate for mayor, was surrounded by press in Brooklyn. I would have missed that too without Monica. The Hodgman and Kristof tweets? I would have missed them, also. This was our third anniversary trip. I can not imagine traveling without her.
The film being screened at the Paley Center will be presented on HBO in the Spring. Eric Metzgar, the film maker, had followed Nicholas Kristof to Congo, where Kristof found starving war victims and interviewed a warlord. Most of the questions went to “Nick”, though someone questioned Eric’s claim of trying to be objective. “There is no way to separate the person from the process. I point the camera where I look.” Two time Pulitzer winner, Kristof, is the hero of the film. He reports on those suffering the most so that people can visualize just how bad these wars are. The Paley audience is the media elite. Pat Mitchell, in charge of the program and the organization, is a dynamo. How did we locate this event? Kristof tweeted.
---
We arrive a little early and have a great Buffalo Wing sandwich. On a small stage in what appears to be an old passenger train at Pete’s Candy store in trendy Williamsburg Brooklyn, we will watch Amy Sohn and Julie Klam read from their books, mostly to other women. Hodgman has Twittered us the event notification. Both live up to impressive resumes. Amy enjoyed Julie relating her Letterman intern memories. Julie was an intern while going to NYU film school and her fictional memories of her real job were great fun. Julie likes Letterman. “He had a five year old. As far as we knew, Letterman was a one woman man.”
I went online to get SNL tickets and Daily Show tickets. We walked on Broadway past a Letterman taping. We stopped at TKTS and might have gone to Broadway shows. But, we somehow avoided the major visual broadcast events for more literary and independent events that popped in front of us or into our cell phones’ text mail.
---
One set of tickets was purchased in advance. That was to see the Les Paul trio at the Iridium. Monica asked, “Would you have gone to see Les Paul if he were still alive?” “Absolutely. I loved to play Les Paul on KALX and would definitely pay to see him.” “Great. Then, we are going for the right reason.”
T.W. Doyle, Les Paul’s engineer, opened with some of his compositions, which I enjoyed, especially as he seemed more like a studio guy than a stage guy.
The Trio told stories about Les. Rusty Paul, his son, sat in the back representing the family. (In early November, nephew Steve Miller performs.) I enjoy the bass player particularly. This is how she happened to join the band:
“Les was a master of dirty jokes. I was playing with two guitarists. Les asked me to stay on the stage and they left. Les said something about girl bass players. I said something about old men. Les said ‘Looks like we have an act.”
Larry Coryell headlined the event, playing a speed guitar version of Bolero. (He talked about how he tried to imitate material that he later discovered that Les Paul recorded at 2x speed. I'm guessing that he came up with this in the 1970's.)
---
We spent two evenings at the Symphony Space at 96th Street, which we learned about from an LED sign that scrolled on Broadway near our hotel. Appearing on the 20th: Frank Rich with Rocco Landesman. Appearing the 21st: Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. We pick up the pamphlets at midnight or so, then go online at the hotel to reserve tickets.
The Leonard Nimoy Thalia, of the Symphony Space, seats one hundred or so and provides plentiful table space for writing. White haired people filter in and join us upon finishing their wine at the adjacent cafe, which has provided WiFi allowing me to play Mafia Wars.
Frank Rich, while engaged, could not be more relaxed. He asks paragraph long questions in perfect rhythm and grammar. NEA head and country music fan, Rocco Landesman, could not be more quotable. Rocco’s father founded the Crystal Palace theater in Saint Louis “because there were no good drinking establishments in the area.” It was a place “where people like Woody Allen would have residencies when they were going through divorces.”
We learn that the NEA has a small budget, $165 million, which is less than New York City’s arts budget and that, nonetheless, Glenn Beck finds ways to criticize them. Someone asks about special NEA programs for women. Rocco says this will not happen as the local organizations funded by the NEA choose how to spend the money, not the federal government.
Landesman pitches that the Arts attract the employees that attract the good companies that make cities thrive. “Arts money is development money.” A second thrust is education. “It turns out that the schools that incorporate art into everything, into math, into science, into everything, have the best test scores.”
Landesman faces little controversy from this polite, older crowd of arts supporters though he notes that his answer about arts spending for women “drew faint applause.”
---
“I’m Levitt. He’s Dubner.”
We have figured this out already. The lanky, stiff guy must be the academic. The formally dressed Al Franken-esque guy must be the writer who first interviewed Levitt in 2003 for the New York Times Magazine.
This is a younger crowd. White haired people are present, but scarce. One would think that given the genial and good-humored Dubner lives a few blocks away, this crowd might be equally friendly to the previous night’s crowd. Judging from the questions, four of the five which could be considered pointed or self serving, this is not the case.
First, Dubner and Levitt describe how they met. This is entertaining and may be found in the forward to SuperFreakonomics. Two of the questions relate to environmental scientists accusing Dubner/Levitt of misquoting them, which they refute here.
“Let’s say we stop putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It will still take 50 to 100 years before warming stops. The temperature will go up six degrees. We are not saying we need to put sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere (about the flow of one garden hose at each pole) to cancel out the warming effect. We are not saying that ocean acidification and carbon dioxide are not issues. But, we do need to talk about geoengineering. That is all.”
A woman plugs her book. Levitt plugs the woman’s book. Dubner gently corrects Levitt: “You learned about the book on prostitution in Chicago 100 years ago from our blog.”
Levitt coins the phrase "carbon crazies" and apologizes as "this is not language that I use elsewhere." As I texted to Facebook friends about our social skills: Monica is Dubner. I'm Levitt.
---
Frank Rich. Nicholas Kristof. Dubner/Levitt. Their data will be solid. Their opinions will be well thought out. Their books will be best sellers.
Dubner/Levitt perhaps seek out the controversy, but are not angry themselves. People currently in their forties and early fifties seem to like to disagree to be disagreeable. “Mensa doofuses” ask impolitic questions, making themselves look unreasonable, where the same questions could be asked politely and reasonably. Heavily represented on television, I will be pleased to see them go out of fashion.
At less than Mensa level, we found Yankees fans in a lower Manhattan bar to be uniformly obnoxious during a playoff game versus the Angels. How obnoxious? They made fun of the Angels’ Nick Adenhart for being dead. People in Jeter uniforms (number 2) may be telling us more than they imagine. It was not just the one comment or the one bar. Because of the Yankee fans in New York, I can no longer imagine myself rooting for the Yankees team, even against the National League.
---
A jean clad woman drinks from a water bottle. “No drinks,” the librarian giving our tour directs. “This is posted on the front door.” Our tour advances to the end of the hall. “No cell phones,” she directs to a man in a suit. “Please move on.”
The New York Public Library has WiFi. The restrooms in the park have attendants who prevent the grounds from turning into camps for the homeless. The library will soon lend. (It has been a research library.) The mission is clear. “No one had heard of this man. He left his estate to the library pointing out that no one had asked his name, but that nonetheless, help had generously been offered. Our mission is to serve everyone.”
More symbolic of our time is the Metropolitan Opera tour guide who looks at Monica’s backpack (actually more of a camera case.) “Of course, since 9-11, we can not allow backpacks backstage of the Met. Do you have a place to store it? No, there is no place to store it here.”
In my imagination, the librarians of NYPL vigorously debate whether water bottles should be allowed. Meanwhile the director of the Lincoln Center prefers not to think about their policies or to discuss them with employees. “Didn’t the Bush Administration warn us about backpacks?”
So much has changed. No one reads books in the Subways. It seems like they did two and four years ago. Dress is much more casual, even on Wall Street. The pace on the sidewalks has slowed as people stare into I-Phones. People in Manhattan do not seem to be as there as they used to be.
---
We did other things. We toured Central Park and its Shakespeare garden on a cold, damp day. We walked the Brooklyn Botanical Center in warmth and sunniness. We found the New York Transit Museum. (Transit in NYC is several light years ahead of local transit.) We often visited the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas drank, for late night suppers. We ate the Barack Obama and the Willie Dixon (both excellent) at Amy Ruth’s on 116th in Harlem. We wandered and walked with direction, primarily around the Village. We stopped for “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” at the IFC Theater.
We found comedy clubs. The first was the Village Lantern, no cover (they asked for donations), where we went because we were hungry. We had been assured some of the comedians had been validated by TV appearances, though the crowd was outnumbered by the comedians. Their schticks related to identity-- black guy, gay guy, guy from India, Bronx guy. The other comic troop, the Upright Citizens Brigade, was a higher league, still only five dollars. Their improv was quite professional.
Giuliani acknowledged Monica near Central park. (I was staring off into some other reality at the time.) Bill Thompson, Obama endorsed candidate for mayor, was surrounded by press in Brooklyn. I would have missed that too without Monica. The Hodgman and Kristof tweets? I would have missed them, also. This was our third anniversary trip. I can not imagine traveling without her.
posted by David Rasmussen at 7:53 PM
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