Happy Birthday Tony!

In honor of your day, I am posting two birthday-themed art pieces from the apartment.

Birthday

by Marc Chagall

I don't know anything about this but it's in the apartment bedroom.  Fancy cake on a fancy pedestal.

On Wednesday Hannah took us to S'Macs which is a little hole-in-the-wall that serves variations of mac and cheese baked in individual iron skillets.  It was as good as you can imagine.  I think one of the secrets is the iron skillet.

We headed down to the Village.  I was looking for a bookstore but it got really hot walking around.  About the time I was looking for a place to go inside and sit down, the Angelika Film Center popped up so we took in the movie Terri.  Tony and I both like John C. Reilly who is in this movie about a high school principal trying to help and befriend an overweight misfit.  About half way through though it goes off the rails and ends up being a little disturbing.  It would not have been a good Shreveport selection; however, it seemed to fit in perfectly with an afternoon in Greenwich Village.

We went to the Nespresso bar in SoHo after the movie for a cappuccino.  There are a couple of these espresso bars in the city.  I love the machines.

We took Hannah and her Baylor friends to I Sodi for dinner Wednesday night.  We had a blast.   The girls are so much fun and shared all kinds of experiences they had had in the city.  All three are doing internships of some sort:  marketing, finance, and music.  I love them!!

Here we are with Lindsey.  She was our second daughter in New York.  I am glad we will have another year at Baylor so I can still see her!

OK...this is a ridiculous place.  Again thanks to Hannah Lee for finding it.  How many times did I as a kid ask for french fries for dinner?  How many times as an adult have I secretly made french fries for dinner?  How many times have I gone to CheeBurger and ordered a burger JUST so I could order the fries?  How many times have I been to a nice restaurant and ordered an entree based on how well it would go with the fries that were also on the menu?   You understand now..this is Nirvana...Shangri la...heaven on earth.  They serve ONLY big fat crispy fries with all kinds of sauces that they cheerfully offer a tasting of before you order.  Then you sit with your sauces and diet coke at one of the two or three tables with holes drilled in the tops and wait (im)patiently for the delivery.  Then the guy comes over, all smiles, with a giant cone of fries pouring out the top.  He sticks the cone in the hole (so THAT'S what that hole was for!) and we dig in.  No words are needed.  We share our three sauces.  It's poetry.  It's a song without words.  It's about the best thing ever...in the whole world.

We then actually find the book store we had looked for the previous day, St Marks Bookshop.  It is a quaint, crammed full of books, bookstore in the East Village.  Independent book stores are a dying breed.  A sign on their door said, "See it here.  Buy it here.  Keep us here."  

Then, simply because we are running out of time, Hannah took us to SoHo to Rice to Riches, a little place that sells only rice pudding.  They had lots of flavors and it was delicious.  I couldn't really enjoy it like I wanted though because I was still full of french fries.

Thursday night Tony and I went to Spice Market where we had a great meal.  (Sorry Lynn and Jane E you weren't there!)  A day before his birthday he does something I never thought he'd EVER do!  He ate the raw tuna appetizer.  I love tuna...raw, seared, grilled....doesn't matter.  And I have begged Tony to try it.  Well he did.  You can't teach an old dog new tricks?  No, but you can teach a YOUNG dog!  

Then we took a cab up to Lincoln Center where there is an art/film exhibit of sorts.  The photographer David Michalek has made a series of film portraits called "Portraits in Dramatic Time."  He filmed actors in brief little scenes and then slowed them down from 10 seconds to 5 minutes or more.  It sounds odd but everyone is pretty mesmerized by it.  It's shown on a giant screen against one of the buildings at Lincoln Center.  It reminded me of going years ago to the Hirshhorn in DC and seeing Douglas Gordan's 24 Hour Psycho where he showed the Alfred Hitchcock movie on a giant screen viewable from both sides, dramatically slowed down to cover a 24 hour period.  I stood there and watched Janet Leigh driving down the street toward her rendezvous with a knife in the shower.  It seemed like I stood there for 5 minutes or more and saw her car go about 3 feet.  The Lincoln Center films were at least short enough where you could see an entire "portrait" in just a few minutes.

So Happy Birthday Tony!  I hear we are headed to a peanut butter sandwich restaurant for lunch!  As it should be!