Comic Con 2013

Here it is! Finally! It's only been two-and-a-half months, but I'll cut myself some slack this time.

On Friday, October 11th, I headed down to the Javits Center after school with my friends Zeanna and Kayla to go to my first ever Comic Con. I'm not into comics or anime or video games at all, really, but I figured going would be worth the experience since I had heard from several people how amazing the whole event is. Zeanna went all out and dressed up like one of her favorite characters from a show she watches, and it was fun to see how excited she was about the whole thing.

I was definitely taken by surprise when I first glanced at the Javits Center set up for Comic Con: I thought I had witnessed a huge crowd when I spent 7 hours there in the 4th grade when I auditioned (unsuccessfully) for Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, but the Center was by far much more crowded for Comic Con. I was expecting entering to be a giant pain because of the specific instructions I had been sent in the mail when I received my ticket, but all the security guard did was scan my pass and I was free to go in .

Admission ticket

The inside was incredibly hectic. If anything is an organized chaos, it is definitely the layout of Comic Con. There were stands upon stands upon stands of comics venders, clothing sellers, and random merchandise venue lining the insides of the venue; however, despite the incredible crowd making it almost impossible to move at some points, the whole center was laid out like New York blocks (at least like upper Manhattan), with straight rows and columns to help you navigate your way around. Zeanna, Kayla, and I spent a long while just walking around, trying to acclimate ourselves to the completely foreign environment. Eventually, we settled in and each began buying some stuff that perked our interest. I was surprised by my lack of desire to purchase everything for sale, but I eventually ended up buying a Totoro plushie.

You can see how packed the place was

After walking around for about an hour, we came across a kiosk run by a company called I Heart Guts, which sells a variety of figurines and plushies of human body parts with faces on them. Zeanna and I were completely enthralled by the creativity of the woman who ran the company and talked to her assistant for a good 20 minutes or half an hour before finally deciding to buy anything. I eventually bought a stuffed testicle as well as an info-chart on testicular cancer, while Zeanna bought a Womb and an info-chart on the menstrual cycle.

Business Card!!!

My stuffed testicle (notice the "having a ball" on the tag)

the info-chart is actually incredibly useful

Given my lack of enthusiasm for a lot of the main features of Comic Con, none of the other displays really stood out to me. However, one thing that definitely left an impression on me was the incredibly kindness and camaraderie almost everyone at Comic Con showed to each other: when someone one a cool prize at spin-the-wheel thing, everyone cheered with excitement; people constantly approached strangers and asked for pictures with them and gladly returned the favor and even did so for others throughout the event. Comic Con was bereft of the sense of judgement that often permeates social scenes, and instead proved itself to be a place where people are welcome to be who they are, actively interact with those around them, and outwardly display their interests. Although I don't feel the need to return in the future to purchase more stuff or view more displays, I would gladly return for the breath of fresh air it provided.

I'm back?

I realize I haven't posted in nearly 2 months, which has been my longest drought of writing as of yet. There are a lot of things that I want to talk about, like Comic Con (which was my last promise for a post), but I'm still debating whether or not to put a lot of them in print. Ideas seem to lose a bit of their flavor over time.

Hopefully another long absence like this one won't be happening again any time soon, as I honestly don't know what was keeping me from crafting another post until now. School has been incredibly overwhelming but I've certainly had opportunities to sit down and write. I think some of it might have to do with a bit of a lack of motivation on my part, but I believe I've sorted that out. I wasn't very good about handling my stress and workload for the first part of the school year, but I've become reinvigorated and determined to follow a new plan that will hopefully allow to me to preserve my sanity for more than just a few weeks in the new year.

Christmas is right around the corner, so something might not be produced until the end of the week. But I will be forcing myself to get it done.

Why we shouldn't idolize Desdemona

Over the past couple days, there's been something that I haven't been able to get out of my head, so I feel writing about it may be the only way to finally get it to stop bothering me.

I just finished reading Othello for English class, and a large portion of our discussion of the book has been devoted to Desdemona as a Christ-like figure (you can tell I go to a Catholic school). Undoubtedly, Desdemona is a great person: her fidelity to her husband, Othello, and her unwavering kindness are traits not found in everyone. Readers can certainly look up to her in those regards.

But something else bothered me. The class began discussing a particular scene in which Desdemona talks to Emilia about the concept of women cheating on their husbands as the men around them seem to do with there wives. When Emilia suggests that women should be allowed to reciprocate the actions of their husbands, Desdemona disagrees, instead saying "God me such uses send, not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend." When observed on its own, I don't see much of an issue with the quote; however, my class ended up discussing the quote in the context not only of Othello's infidelity, but his violence towards Desdemona towards the end of the play. Eventually, the consensus was reached that we should idolize Desdemona for her ultimate desire to work on bettering herself instead of gaining revenge on her husband despite what he has done.

I do not agree with this. Sure, Desdemona's actions show her incredible goodness of heart, but they also depict her as a door-mat for Othello to trample all over. When observing the world around us, it seems outrageous to encourage people to model her behavior. We're basically telling victims of domestic violence to suck it up and work on making themselves better people rather than telling them to stand up for themselves. This thought didn't seem to occur to anyone in the room when we were discussing it in class, but upon further reflection that doesn't seem too surprising considering the entire English department is run by men. I by no means think that they're misogynistic in any sense, but I think the fact that the department remains women-less closes up the possibility of the discussion of different viewpoints and aspects of literature, especially women's issues in famous works.

I normally wouldn't want to write something like this, but I really felt that I had to get it out of my system. A post about Comic Con will be coming soon

Living

I've never considered myself much of a poetry fan, but every once in a while I'll come across something that speaks to me. Most recently, "Living" by Denise Levertov was one of those exceptions:

The fire in leaf and grass
so green it seems
each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves
shivering in the sun,
each day the last day.

A red salamander
so cold and so
easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet
and long tail. I hold
my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.


Part of my reasoning behind starting this blog was to open myself up to new opportunities and experience the world in ways I hadn't before. The poem resonates with me because of its emphasis on living in the present, valuing experiences as they come to you but letting them go so you can embrace something else in the future. The poem's short, quick to read, and yet powerful enough to really capture one's attention.

The Feast of San Gennaro

Two weeks ago I attended the Feast of San Gennaro with a good friend Hayley. I had hoped to publish this post earlier in the week, but my dad spilled coffee all over my computer and successfully broke it, leaving me without a computer for the remainder of the week. I finally got a new one today, so I'm trying to finish this guy up.

Hayley and I met downtown in that awkward area where Little Italy and Chinatown really seem to blend together, as in you see a fish market right next to a pastry shop stocked with cannolis, and proceeded to make our way up the street fair.

Let me say that this festival was HUGE. I accidentally stumbled upon it last year when I went downtown and it didn't seem to be that crowded, yet I realized that of course it would less packed on a Tuesday afternoon than it would be on a Saturday evening. However, despite my intimidation by big crowds, I managed to push my way through. I wanted to take nice pictures of the festival on my camera, but it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to crowded for me to be able to pull my camera out my bag + it was raining and I didn't want to risk breaking my camera. I was forced to settle for pictures on my phone, which turned out less terribly than I thought they would.

It was hard for me to capture any good photos simply because of the swarm of people that kept pushing me out of their way when they walked by.

who couldn't love a giant cannoli??

It started raining right when Hayley and I reached the end of the festival chain, so we decided to go into this cute little place called Macbar which is amazing because it ONLY SERVES MAC AND CHEESE!!!!!!!! Obviously I was very excited. I would recommend going there when not very full, because if you get a medium or large, you get a cool macaroni-shaped reusable container to carry your food around in.

Another unique experience of the evening was that I got to try a "cronoli". There was a lot of hype this passed summer about a new food item called the cronut, a mixture of a donut and croissant, sold only at this one bakery. Many bakeries have tried creating their own spin on the cronut, and the cronoli was Little Italy's interpretation, a cronut filled with cannoli cream. Hayley bought one and I had a bite, and I must say it was delicious. I don't think it needed the cream in the center, however, but I can definitely see why people wait outside of Dominique Ansel Bakery starting at 5 just to get their hands on two cronuts.

Hayley and I were a bit rushed on our way back from the festival as the light drizzle turned into a massive downpour. We ran to the nearest subway station and headed home. I would've liked to stay longer, but you just have to take what life throws your way sometimes.

Junior

I've just finished my third week of school, and I'm somewhat happy/not-so-happy to say that it has finally come on full throttle. I now at least know what to expect for the rest of the year when it comes to assignments, attitudes of my teachers, and class schedule which is nice, but the work is definitely starting to pile up, thus limiting the amount of time I have to write.

I say that things have really picked up now because I had my first test last week and have another 3 this week, and my test calendar should continue in a similar pattern for the rest of the year. I've gotten passed the boring first couple of days where teachers outline the syllabus and tell you that you can only take notes at home on the left-hand side of your notebook (which actually happened, by the way), so at least I'm learning now. The first couple days were also met with a lot of speeches from faculty members all telling us "Guys, you're going to work 749X harder than you've ever had this year. Some of you might die. Seriously," followed by the stress-management and "oh all your teachers are here for you even though they'll be slowly eating away at your soul with work" talks, which did not help me bring down my already high levels of anxiety. That just made me wish I could go back to the days where I would come home from school and watch Nickelodeon all afternoon while eating cheerios and not hating myself.

I went to the Feast of San Gennaro last Saturday evening with a friend, and I hope to have that post out by the end of this week. I brought my camera but it was raining and I didn't want to screw anything up so I took pictures on my phone instead. 

Ciao! (you can see I've really embraced Italian culture)

Fries to Pudding

Last week, in an attempt to fend off junior year anxiety from settling in too quickly, my friend and I decided to explore the East Village and try out a couple of restaurants to eat away our feelings. She had read about most of these places in a Buzzfeed article listing eateries (a word I loathe yet it seems to be the only appropriate one) that make living in New York during a shitty day worth it. Overall, I think the excursion went pretty well.

We started by going to a place called Pommes Frites and bought some poutine (a mixture of french fries, gravy, and cheese). While I've had better poutine, this was pretty close, and the fries were definitely good. It might have been more of a hit had I gotten regular fries and chose one of their various dipping sauces instead, but I'm not complaining.

mmmmm poutine

On our way to our second stop, we passed by "Moishe's Bake Shop," a Kosher bakery hidden behind scaffolding, and decided to go in. We were met by a wide arrangement of baked goods making difficult to choose one thing that I wanted. I eventually decided on a  sponge cake-like thing with cream in between the rolls of cake, filled with jelly and topped with sprinkles. I didn't know it had jelly at the beginning but it didn't make a difference: it was amazing. Perhaps my favorite part of the whole thing was that you got to tell them how big you wanted your piece to be, and the price is calculated by the weight, so you can configure both the size of your snack and wallet to your appetite. I got a bigger piece than I would have liked but it ended up being only $1.50 which is amazing for a place in the city.

delicious pastry of which I do not know the name

My friend and I continued on to a place called Vanessa's Dumplings and ordered their pork and chive dumplings (you get 4 for $1!!!!!!!!!!). The dumplings were incredible and were served quickly, and the price is hard to argue with. I don't know where else you can get a meal for $1 in New York.

FYI the brown sauce on the table is the one for the dumplings

Our last stop on the East Village food tour was to a place called Sugar Sweet Sunshine, and boy did it make our day bright (sorry, I had to). We ordered the Chocolate Chip Extravaganza, which is sort of like chocolate chip cookie pudding. And trust me, it tasted as good as it sounds. I would recommend sticking to a small unless you're really hungry and craving something sweet, as the quantity of the pudding is a lot more than you would think. The employees also gave me a free cookie to go along with it! How sweet!

Definitely the best thing I've had in a while

 Go to all these places!!!!! They're delicious!!!!! I'll write soon!

Choir Trip to DC

So about this time two months ago, my choir went on a trip to perform various concerts in Washington, D.C. I've been thinking a lot on how to narrow down the details of the trip to make it sound more interesting, but I eventually decided that maybe I should just go ahead and write it and see how it turns out. I don't consider myself one for proofreading, so hopefully no one is offended by my atrocious English.

We departed on Friday, May 24th at around 8 in the morning from Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, and luckily I didn't have to get up too early to be able to get there on time. My mom was one of the parent chaperones, so of course we were late to the pick-up spot. Once there, every chorister grabbed his or her (mostly her, the ratio of boys to girls is something like 8:1) robes, folders, and lunch and headed onto the bus. We got to travel in a really nice tour bus, which made the 5 hour trip somewhat bearable, despite the fact that I had to watch movies targeted towards the 10-year-olds. I wanted to sleep for the majority of the trip, but I had to finish writing an English paper that was due that day since I had been too excited to do it the night before/put it off for too long that I physically could not write it because my brain was unable to function at 3 in the morning (mostly the latter). That probably wasn't my best decision.

Immediately after arriving in D.C. we had our first concert: a performance at a veteran's home just outside of the city. All the veterans were super cute and seemed really excited to listen to us sing which made the whole experience so much more fun. I had a solo singing "Edelweiss" from The Sound of Music but I definitely butchered it. The organizers at the home provided us with snacks at the end which made everything better, and I may or may not have taken a box of girl scout cookies to our hotel...

The veterans' home is located on Abraham Lincoln's property, so we got a tour of the premises and I was able to take a couple photos with his statue. I guess it's the closest I'll ever get to an actual picture with him.

We did a quick tour of the Jefferson Memorial with our tour guide whose name I forget, so I'll just call her Mary Antoinette. I was sometimes unable to understand some of her English under her heavy French accent, but most of us weren't even listening to her because we were too excited not being in New York/singing.

The Prophet herself

After viewing the Jefferson Memorial, we got dinner at a terrible burger place called Hamburger Hamlet. I'm normally picky with with my food yet will also acknowledge if I'm being overly critical, but trust me when I say that this food was absolutely terrible. I was expecting a Shakespearean themed burger joint. My expectations were not met. Not even the cookies were good, and it's pretty hard to mess up cookies. We were very disappointed.

some mediocre Hamburger Hamlet salad

We then checked into the Sheraton Hotel at Pentagon City, just outside of DC. We were also there at the same time a huge Indian wedding was going on, so about one hundred women in saris were there to greet us in the lobby. I shared a room with two guys, who also happen to be the only other males in the whole high school choir. I had a lot of work to do but they were incredibly hyper and were excited by the whole experience so I got none of it got done. Of course, this led to a series of panic attacks, but needless to say, I survived the ordeal.

The hotel provided us with breakfast in the morning which was quite nice as I did not feel like putting on clothes to leave the hotel and eat at a restaurant. I made many people's mornings worse by taking photos of them as they ate.

We did a lot of stuff on this trip, and I'm afraid of boring you with boring stories of the touristy stuff we did. So, to give you a quick rundown of the 2nd day in DC, my choir visited the Arlington National Cemetery (which I skipped out on so I could do work on the bus) and the Capitol before performing at the Basilica of the National Shrine where we completely missed a measure of one of our songs because nobody decided to start singing. We then had dinner at the Kennedy Cafe which was quite good, and headed out on the balcony to take some pictures. Throughout the day, Mary Antoinette unsuccessfully tried to teach us random crap about DC but no one listened because it was incorrect random crap that no one cares about.

a pretty accurate depiction of my choir

The next day we performed at the Georgetown Presbyterian Church. We had to sit through the mass since we sang along to all the songs, but I actually listened to what the priest (a woman) had to say and found it quite interesting. I'm not a religious person at all but I think I felt more inclined to listen since I was forced to sit there anyway. We then drove to Georgetown University (my dad talked about the school while we drove there since Mary Antoinette was deemed incompetent at teaching us things) and sat around there for a bit. My mom and I ditched the choir afterwards so I could go back to the hotel and get some work done, as the trip was inconveniently taken just a week before finals.

On our last day we visited various attractions like the Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials before returning home around 3 pm. After another 5 hour bus ride I got dinner with my mom and crashed once I got home.

I'm sorry this was not the most enlightening of posts but I had to write it simply because it's been in the works for 3 months. I will try to make things interesting from now on. I think I'm starting to put all the pieces of the blogging puzzle together.

Applause

Let me just take a second to say how obsessed I am with Lady Gaga's new song "Applause", and how disappointed I am that it only debuted at #6 on the Billboard charts while Katy Perry's new song "Roar" debuted at #2. I'm getting tired of sappy song after sappy song coming from her. And quite frankly I don't even think "Roar" is good at all. She needs to revamp her sound back to what made her famous, like "I Kissed a Girl" or "Hot N Cold", or maybe that's just me.

Also "Royals" by Lorde is the shit, even though she makes me hate myself because she's only 16 and has experienced a level of success that I never will. I think she comes second only to Jojo in terms of young teenagers who've managed to have significant success in music in recent years, even though Jojo's prime was back in '06. I wonder what happened to her...

Tallinn!

Hey guys! So I had limited access to internet while I was in Finland, and only two days after returning from Tallinn I left for St. Petersburg, where it was impossible for me to write anything since I purposely left my phone in Finland. So I'll just pick up where I left off:

We decided to go on a day trip to Tallinn since it's only a 2 hour boat ride away from Helsinki, and it would give us something else to do since we were spending so much time in Finland. Unfortunately, in order to spend the full day there we had to wake up at 5:30 to catch a 6:45 boat, but that was the only downside to the day, other than the sub-par cheesecake that I ate on the boat for breakfast.

We exited the boat at around 9 o'clock and made our way to the old side of the city, walking through a big shopping center along the way. It pained me to listen to the ads for the Regina Spektor concert which was happening in a couple of days and that I wouldn't be able to go to because I would be in St. Petersburg, but let's move past that...

If you've never been to the Old Town of Tallinn, it is absolutely gorgeous. It's one of the very few areas in Europe where they've kept a lot of the Medieval buildings intact, yet I don't think all the tourist shops were around when people lived there back in the Middle Ages. We walked around for ages admiring the buildings and walking into various shops. I also got to ride a Segway for the first time in my life, and now I want one even though most people look stupid riding them. My mom's host sister from Finland ended up crashing the Segway into the sidewalk and breaking it, ending that bit of fun.

Overhead view of the Old Town of Tallinn

Riding the Segway (FYI that's not me)

Most of the day was spent just walking around, as the old cobble-stone roads twist and turn seemingly leading in no direction. I went to a couple interesting museums and had a sub-par massage as well, but walking composed at least 50% of the time.  Because of this, I got to see a lot of traditional Estonian shops and cuisine, like McDonalds.

Probably one of the most interesting parts of the visit was going on the KGB tour at the Viru Hotel, especially since our tour guide was hilarious. If you're going to Tallinn for some reason I would highly recommend going on the tour. I would also not recommend going to the zoo as I heard it was quite sad and disappointing.

It started drizzling towards the end of the trip so luckily it was time for dinner. We went to this amazing restaurant with incredibly food that was surprisingly cheap. I think I had chicken for the main course and tried their frozen cheesecake for dessert. It definitely made up for the dry, stale cheesecake I had had in the morning.

Apparently I did not take any photos of my meal, but for some reason I took a picture of the restaurant

We started making our way back to the dock at around 9:45 since we had a 10:30 ship.

I don't know what I was thinking but I felt compelled to take this photo of a pidgeon

Unfortunately, the ship did not leave until 11:30 for whatever reason, but of course it had to involve the ship violently shaking for 20 minutes making me think the ship was going to sink, which is my biggest fear behind being murdered. Obviously that was not fun. Eventually the ship took off and we arrived in Helsinki at 12:30. I had tried sleeping on the ship by curling up between two chairs, which did not work as I woke up with a huge knot in my neck. It's safe to say that I slept well that night.

I have a lot of shit to write about so please bear with me if not a lot of it is out soon.

Fun in Finland part 1

I'm currently sitting in a lightless guest room at a family friend's apartment in Helsinki, after my mom forced me to turn the lights out because she wanted to go to sleep. I also can't type this on my laptop as my mom refused to buy an adapter for the trip, and has now succeeded in using my computer every day since we arrived last Thursday, draining my computer of its limited battery and forcing me to type this on my phone. But I'm a survivor.

I originally wanted to title this post "Hip in Helsinki", but I realized that that makes me sound like a total douchebag. I think "Fun in Finland" is an appropriate replacement.

I've been here for 5 days now, but I've spent half the time sleeping (almost literally) so I don't feel like I've done as much as I would have liked, but I still have over a week to make some magic happen. Still, I don't want to cram everything into one post. "Fun in Finland part 1" has already been a bit of a jumbled mess talking about nothing, and I don't want to make this any more chaotic than it already is. So I'll do a little introduction to Finland by discussing Helsinki's Market Square:

When I first visited Finland with my mom six years ago, Helsinki's famous Market Square was one of the first things she showed me, and one of the few that I can still remember vividly. While not impressive in size (it spans maybe 2-3 New York City blocks in length), it's a hotspot of Finnish culture.

The market square is composed of a mixture of food vendors and trinket sellers, much like a traditional flea market. In several tents, you can find little magnets with Finnish flags on them, moose with shirts saying "I <3 Finland!", or any of your other stereotypical tourist-y items. However, in most of the other tents you find items celebrating Finnish tradition: hand-made dolls line the walls of several shops, fur scarves or coats hang from the roof of tarps, and children's books detailing Finnish history lay in stacks on various tables lining the market. It comes as no surprise that tourists frequent the agora, making the Finnish population appear much more heterogenous than it actually is.

Of course, my favorite part of the market has to be the food. While I have yet to try any if the incredibly greasy fish vendors yet, the berry vendors and pastry shops are undoubtedly some of my favorite places in the world. 

Finland has the best strawberries in the world. You don't know a real strawberry until you've had a Finnish one. They're about a third of the size of a normal strawberry, but pack the same amount of flavor. If I could only eat Finnish strawberries for the rest of my life, I don't think I would complain that much.

However, if I could pick one other food to be able to dine on, the raspberry jam donuts would be a very close contender. They're very simple: a piece of dough with some raspberry jam fried and sprinkled with sugar. It doesn't sound too fancy, but sometimes stuff is better that way. And they shouldn't make it any more complicated, because it's perfect the way it is.

Now that wraps up all I have to say about the market square, but there is a lot more to Finland than just that. I'll hopefully be able to write about my day trip to Tallinn sometime tomorrow.

Moi moi (bye)! 

Lily Allen

A common interview question is something along the lines of "If you could have dinner anybody in the world, who would it be?" While I would like to come across as knowledgeable and cultured by answering with Madeleine Albright or Nelson Mandela, I would not. If I could share a meal with anyone on Earth, it would probably have to be Lily Allen.

But I'm not ashamed of that. While it would be absolutely amazing to meet the first female Secretary of State of the US or the man responsible for the end of Apartheid in South Africa, I would instead choose to dine with a British pop star.

Of course, I do have my reasons for feeling this way; I wouldn't say Lily Allen unless I meant it. First of all, I'm a huge fan of her work, which I think is a prerequisite for anyone being the answer to this question. Second, she's a good person. Despite her having the mouth of a sailor, Lily Allen never uses her language to rip on anyone, and she even attempted to remove a guy who made racist remarks off Twitter. But lastly, and the more important of the three reasons, I love her attitude. I'll extend point number 3 into a new paragraph.

Lily Allen's attitude is one of the best out there. I admire her for trying to ban the guy from Twitter who made racist remarks, because I don't think a lot of people would want to take a stand on something like that. She clearly doesn't take shit from anybody, and I'm incapable of saying that I can do the same. I've lived my life afraid of what other people thought about me, even if I didn't know at all: My mood can quickly turn sour if someone is giving me a strange look on the street because I think something's wrong with me. I worry that people make fun of me for something that I said or did once I leave the room. But I don't think Lily Allen gives a crap about what people think about her. I think Lily Allen lives her life the way she sees fit and tells everyone who tells her otherwise to go fuck themselves. That's the kind of attitude that I want for myself. I often feel held back because of my insecurities and self-consciousness, but I know that I could be a lot happier if I just let loose and stopped caring about what people thought about me.

And Lily Allen's music helps me do just that. When I listen to her, I think a bit of her attitude rubs off on me. I start seeing the world through her point of view, and it's a lot more enjoyable than my perspective. My lens is clouded by the outside world and my own inhibitions, while hers is clear and focused on whatever she wants to achieve. While millions of others have had this same perspective of the world and way of thinking, Lily Allen's has the biggest direct impact on me because I get to listen to her every day through her music. She is unknowingly helping me to become the person I want to be.

So that's why Lily Allen is one of the coolest people on Earth, and why I would probably prefer to have dinner with her than with Barack Obama.

16 should be the new 17

I guess you can call me a thrill-seeker now, considering I tried to sneak into a rated R movie.

Last week, I attempted to go see the The Bling Ring with one of my friends. Since we're both 16, we knew we technically should not have been allowed to go inside (you have to be 17 to see a rated R movie), but often enough the ticket venders actually don't give a crap and will let you go inside anyway without asking for ID. But, of course, this time the ticket vender actually did give a crap. After starting to tear one of our ticket stubs and directing us to our theater, she stopped saying, "oh wait. I need to see your IDs."

Since I am not 17, none of my ID would allow me to see the movie, and since I don't have a fake ID to use either, I realized there was no hope. So, I tried to play it cool: "Does an expired Barnes and Noble membership card count?"

"No. I'm sorry but I can't let you enter the theater"

While I was upset that I got stuck with the one ticket vender in the world who actually gives a shit about her job, I could tell that she felt bad about turning us away, which made me dislike her less. I was able to get a refund, so I guess it's ok.

I promise I'm not a Gangsta...

I've recently re-examined my reasons for wanting to start a blog in the first place: I hoped to become more adventurous and open my eyes up to the city by exploring new neighborhoods just for the hell of it; however, my blog has so far only been an account of things I would have normally done or experienced, rather than experiences that would make me step out of my comfort zone or known territory.

So today I tried to change that. I decided to go to Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown with one of my friends. While I visit all of these places on a somewhat-regular basis, what I did today is what I hope to accomplish more of in the future: walking around and trying to uncover hidden gems in the city to increasing my knowledge of the place I call home.

I spent the entire morning on the Upper West Side at a friend's house and finally went downtown at 5ish. I went to a place called Macbar for dinner. I don't know whether to call it a restaurant or not, but it's basically a tiny little shop that only sells macaroni and cheese. Of course, there are a myriad of different types to choose from, so you can never feel bored of mac & cheese. I got margarita macaroni and was given a noodle-shaped container to hold it in, which I still have. I've noticed that more and more places in New York are coming up with fancy containers for their food, probably just to charge more money for their dishes. However, the macaroni and cheese was reasonably priced ($8 for a medium container, which can serve as two meals for someone with a mild appetite).

After dinner, I went to Rice to Riches (website to come once it's finished), one of my favorite stops in all of New York. Just like Macbar, Rice to Riches only serves one type of food, but in this case it's rice pudding. I'm not normally a rice pudding fan, but Rice to Riches hits it out of the ballpark, not to mention all the funny signs that hang on the walls of the restaurant. It's always hard to choose from the variety of different flavors, but the butterscotch, cheesecake, and caramel are tough to beat. Rice to Riches also serves it's food in a nice container, which I've now started to collect and can use as tupperware for dishes I eat at home. However, Rice to Riches is very expensive, so I only go once every couple of months as to not go bankrupt.

The exterior of Rice to Riches

After, my friend and I just walked downtown a bit. We passed by a very nice balloon man, and I got my friend to pose for a couple photos with him:

We then went to a sketchy alley, where I took several photos of my friend hoping she would use them for her facebook profile picture, which she did.

 The day was pretty normal until two aspiring rappers came up to me on my way home and shoved a CD in my hands and demanded that I give them a tip for it. After handing it back, I walked for another block until I was approached by the same two men--they had been following me the whole time. I was not put at ease in spite of one of them telling me "Yo son, don't be worried. I promise I'm not a gangsta." They went and harassed some different people after my friend threatened to call the cops. It's useful having friends who actually have balls.

Overall, Soho, Little Italy, and Chinatown are incredibly fun neighborhoods to go and visit, which is why I do it so often. Hopefully I'll walk around Brooklyn sometime soon, as I very frequently go there unless it's to get to the New York Aquarium to volunteer.

Junior Team Tennis Finals!

I had some trouble deciding whether to write about my Junior Team Tennis finals or the choir trip first. Then I realized it's only fitting that I go in chronological order:


SO, throughout the year a select few of kids in my tennis program played on a tennis team (called the "Harlem Treers") that competed on weekends in a lead-up to the regional championships in April. My team was absolutely amazing and I'm extremely grateful that I'm able to train with them on a regular basis. We played well throughout the year and we were ultimately seeded second at the finals, which took place the last Sunday of April (the 24th???).

Since my family doesn't own a car, my dad had to rent one to be able to get to the National Tennis Center out in Queens. We could've taken the train but the subway system was incredibly messed up and it would have taken an extra hour, so we thought driving would be more convenient. My father ended up driving two of my teammates as well, so I guess renting the car was a good choice.

We got to the tennis center at 11, checked in, and then warmed up on an empty court before the contest started. It was extremely windy, but luckily I brought a warm-up suit which did not only save me from the cold but also made me look like an incredibly legitimate tennis player, which I like to think I am. The official competition started at 12, so we then headed over to the courts we were playing on, and we all snapped a few photos on my camera:

Tyra, captain of the team (pictured left), and Sofia (on the right)

Isadora (left), and Dina (right)

Unfortunately, the girls were much more interested in taking photos than the guys, so I have no pictures of Stephen or Justin.

Tyra getting ready to serve (featuring my racket)

We beat the first two teams incredibly easily, losing only one match out of 10 (unfortunately I was the one who lost, but the guy cheated so I'll forgive myself). Each round we would play one boys' singles, girls' singles, boys' doubles, girls' doubles, and mixed doubles match.

Then we played the last team. Out of nowhere we had to play people who were incredibly talented, and we were already tired from the day (our opponents only had to play one team to make it to the finals) and weren't playing well because we had only played crappy teams. We ended up losing, but it was pretty close. Tyra and I were still playing a match from the second round when we started playing the last team, so we weren't able to select who on our team would play who on the other team. We maybe could have won if we were able to choose, but the other team really deserved to win.

I got a nice silver medal and a participation ribbon, but of course it would have been better had we won and gone on to the state finals. But I guess you gotta take what's given to you.

Yay summer!!

I'm finally done with school!

While I'm not only pleased that this means I no longer have to wake up at the crack of dawn every morning and proceed to do strenuous work all day, I'm also happy that summer break is here because it'll give me more time to write. I still have not fulfilled my promise of posting photos and writing about my Junior Team Tennis finals nor my choir's trip to Washington, D.C. Both of those will be coming within the next couple days, I promise. And I really mean it this time.

I would write more/write a post about something else right now, but it's currently 1:35 in New York right now and I don't have the energy to do so. I'm barely able to stay awake to write this.

I will be posting soon. Thanks for tolerating me.

Prelude to DC

I'm currently sitting at my desk at the Sheraton Hotel outside of Washington D.C. while my roommates are practically spooning in bed. After sharing a bed for two nights, this is thankfully my night to have one to myself.

Now why am I in Washington D.C.? On Friday I could have given you a straightforward answer, but after three screaming-children-filled nights, one very shitty meal, and one mental breakdown later, I'm currently re-evaluation my life choices. I'm not even sure why I'm here anymore.

Ok. The truth is my choir decided to come to D.C. to perform a series of shows after we were thrown into the spotlight as a result of our critically-acclaimed Saturday Night Live performance. Realistically, our choir director probably just called some friends up and asked if they would want us to sing, but I like telling myself that we were invited to come so that I feel important.

We were on a bus for 5 hours on Friday. I had to vote to watch August Rush just to avoid Madagascar 3. I hate August Rush. 

I planned to get work done but all I ended up doing was reading a little bit of a book and finishing an English paper I had fallen asleep writing the night before. I guess I couldn't expect much from the bus ride since there were 2000 little kids all screaming/singing songs that are not ok to sing on a bus (i.e. songs we had to sing at our concerts and that I was tired of hearing).

We eventually sang our concerts and I took 500+ photos, but now one of the guys I'm rooming with is leaning over my shoulder, so I'll use this as an appropriate time to sign off. 

Lana Del Rey is a genius

Ok. I can't hide it anymore. I know I sound like a teenage white girl when I say this but Lana Del Rey is absolutely amazing.

Originally, I was convinced that Lana Del Rey was talentless and sang sappy songs knowing that they would sell. However, I've now come to the realization that she's a genius, or at least smart enough to hire people who are geniuses, which means she must be somewhat intelligent, right?

Let me prove my point: Lana Del Rey clearly knows her stuff. She's obviously heavily invested in 50s and 60s Americana, highlighted in several of her music videos. I have to say, her music video for "National Anthem" is probably the best music video I've ever seen. I mean that's not saying much because most artists either jump around with their shirts off or have flashy lights (or most commonly both), probably in an attempt to make everyone watching have a seizure so they can't remember how bad the video was. But seriously, this music video is great. Lana opened with her rendition of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to the President and then recreated home videos of the Kennedy family in order to make the sense of corruption come full circle. I still don't know why A$AP Rocky had to play President Kennedy but it worked.

Now she has a new music video for her lead single "Young and Beautiful" off the "The Great Gatsby" soundtrack (which is pretty solid by the way). The music video is pretty simple but the song fits the mood of "The Great Gatsby" pretty well. I've yet to see the movie but I've heard terrible things about it so I have mixed feelings about seeing it with my English class on Wednesday. Hopefully I don't think it sucks as much as everyone else does.

Ciao.

News just in on my phone

So! It's been about 3 weeks.

The mystery of "which asshole stole my phone?" has been solved!

If you don't remember what happened, basically, I was incredibly stupid and left my coat unattended on a chair at the National Tennis Center a couple weeks ago, and one of the cleaning ladies ended up stealing my phone and all of the money in my wallet. Fortunately, she was not too bright either, as she picked up my coat and moved it to a different location while doing this, allowing the management at the tennis center to figure out who stole my shit after I filed a police report. The police ended up getting my phone back, but I needed to buy a new one anyway because the lady seemed to have smashed it with a hammer or something like that.

(maybe she ran it over with a car??)

Anyway, now everything has gotten all official and I got a letter from an assistant to the DA in Queens. I'm part of an official court case! Maybe it'll go on to become one of those iconic Supreme Court Decisions like Brown v. Board of Education or Marbury v. Madison and future American high school students will have to learn about me. Probably not because it's just a minor felony and will be handled in a small court, but anything is possible, right? At least I'll end up getting paid a restitution fee from the lady that clearly broke my phone (she claims it was "like that already").

I'll let you know if I end up going to court.

Pandora is amazing

Ok. Pandora radio has to be the most glorious thing ever. Whoever created it is a genius because it's algorithm for finding music it thinks you would like is incredibly accurate; I have discovered so many new artists and songs that I have fallen completely in love with. Unfortunately, since I'm a loser and have moral qualms about downloading stuff illegally, I must wait until I have money to be able to purchase all of these songs on iTunes. I also am just too lazy to search for and crop photos to be the cover art for the music I would download.

http://www.pandora.com/

Yay Pandora