New York²

  I'm back.

  Add some bass to that. I'm back for real. This isn't me saying I'll be back and then disappearing for a month. Summer's here, and I have time to spend on the blog. I'm also back from my trip to the centre of the world: New York.

  What? You didn't know I was in New York to accept a National Art and Writing Award in Carnegie Hall. That really sucks. If only the internet had some sort of way of linking you to my badly formatted post about said awards. I bet they'll figure out how to 'link' stuff on the internet IN THE FUTURE! We can only hope.

  Anyways, I spent a (much too short) week in New York City, checking out the art galleries and museums, eating French sushi (it's the way to go), and accepting awards at Carnegie. Meryl Streep was there. Everyone digs Meryl Streep.

  Day-by-day play-by-play of New York², city so nice they named it².
 Hit "Read more" to actually read the post.

  Sunday 27

  We were not aware of Memorial Day falling on the coming Monday. Apparently, tourists like going to New York. It's pretty unbelievable. Since when do tourists like New York? Or the Empire State Building? Or the Statue of Liberty? Yeah, it's weird.

  We checked into the Roosevelt Hotel that evening and decided to walk around a bit, see what's up. 

• Times Square's that way!
• Walking, walking, walking
• Hey, there aren't many people walking here...
• Damn. Times Square's not this way. Dark alleyways are this way.
• "Stranger-man! Do not be perturbed! We are need of your assistance: pray tell, where is the nearest Times Square? Ah, that way? The exact opposite direction from whence we came? Salutations, Stranger-man!"
• A quick note, New Yorkers are, from my observations, the nicest big-city dwellers out there. Most big-city peoples are quite abrasive if you need directions and the such. New Yorkers are mostly very pleasant to talk with.
• So it turns out that was a horrible time to go to Times Square. Hundreds of Memorial Day people compressed onto the tiny sidewalk that leads to the Square: intense. 
• We just about get there but turn out and leave for our hotel.
• Sleep is a priority on this day.
• Good night.

Oh no! People!

  Monday 28

  The general consensus was to go to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art. That was probably my favorite place in New York. There really isn't much to say other than the fact that we got through only two of the six floors; we're the kind of people who spend a while looking at everything. No fly-bys here. Moving from the top-down, we saw an exhibition dedicated solely to the 'photography' of Cindy Sherman. Amazing stuff. You can check out the link, but the pieces work best, as far as I can tell, with the backstory supplied at the exhibition. 

  Next, we rode the escalator down to the fifth floor, which is essentially the 'origins' story of modern art. You know, like that Wolverine movie, the difference being that MoMA isn't a waste of time and money. I've come to realize that Monet is probably my favorite painter, along with van Gogh. I like, among other forms of course, art that feels pleasant to look at (like pop art). Monet and van Gogh fall wonderfully into that category. 

  If you ever visit MoMA, look at van Gogh's "Starry Night" from the side. You can almost feel his brush strokes that night, the paint is so thick.

  We tried to go through floor two, but ended up flying through it because of time constraints (exception to no fly-bys). We had lunch MoMA's Café 2. Very good indeed (like all the food we had in New York).

MoMA!

If life were a window, it probably wouldn't be this window. This is one of MoMA's huge windows, not the window of life.

"Oh no no no! I didn't mean to, man! Oh crap. Do you need...Do you need a band aid or something for your eye? Damn. I am going to regret this for a while"

Wait a second. This looks familiar. Oh! All the neighbourhoods around mine! I almost didn't recognize you.
That's a lie. I did recognize you.

Oh excuse me. I'm a little busy right now. Being hip.

The view out of one of MoMA's windows

Yo dawg. I heard you like van Gogh, so I took a photo of a van Gogh so you can van Gogh while you van Gogh.

I know the Futurism gallery when I see it! One room? Seriously? Let's get our shitzu together, guys.

Man, that's some A-class photography on my part. Seen through one of MoMA's windows.

There's a lot of good stuff going on in this photo. We've got what appears to be a WWII fighter plane crashing into a building. We've got skeletons in helmets marching and doing their thing. We've got a sharp-edged eye being a sharp-edged eye. I mean, this scene is a classic case of fighter-plane-crashing-into-building-with-skeletons-marching-while-an-eye-looks-over-them. Textbook example, ladies and gentlemen.

  So after that we started for Central Park. Now see, in Canada a 'park' within a city usually refers to a small field and a playground or something like that. In Europe and Russia (two places where I've been!), a park in the middle of a city refers to a fairly large green sanctuary, a haven in the urban sprawl. Central Park falls into the second category of park: a great word to describe it is lush. It eeks out happiness. Be careful, if you sit on a bench in the shade on a hot day like we did, you will never leave. Ever. We watched a roller-skate-dance-thing going down on one of the streets. You can't call it a derby because creepy women weren't trying to beat the crap out of each other while on skates. It was mostly people who were nearing middle-age, who were part of the whole roller-skate-dance-thing in the '80s. But man were they tearing that place up. Like knives. They were like knives on skates, tearing that place up.

Roller-rave!

Oasis

"The production of bubbles has been found to be a highly amusing and calming activity"
-Every single child alive, and every single adult who is still a child

The Central Park reservoir at sunset

More of that

Just can't get enough

 After walking through the Park and eating at this French sushi place (it was a French chain created by a French chef in France who added his own thing to Japanese cuisine. They had the coolest rolls, like a chicken-caesar roll. I'm going to say France again. Whoooooaaaatch out! France.), we walked to the Rockefeller Center and took the elevator up to the 70th floor of the Rockefeller Building. New York skyline, ladies and gentlemen! There was this crazy room that tracked your movement and assigned a colour to you, which was represented by a tile lighting up over your head wherever you walked in that room. If enough people walked in, the room would enter seizure-mode, make noise, and explode into all sorts of colours. If you came up to a wall, it would also light up near you. Crazy room, you crazy!

Oh, hey there, Empire State Building. You want to go out for coffee later? Not that it matters: I'm married to... Nope, looks like I'm fairly single.   

These are funky glasses, and Blogger won't let me place them anywhere else in this post. Have it your way, Blogger. You stubborn poop.

30 seconds of exposure - I'm pretty extreme

This is me trying to ask the Empire State Building out.

The Rockefeller Building in all its Rockefeller Building glory

Whoa there, crazy room! Turn the crazy down just a notch.

Bam. That's how epilepsy happens.

No, no. I know you did not just park in this no parking zone. I know you didn't just do that.

It rained that night, and our umbrellas needed drying. Hence this photo of umbrellas drying over an air conditioner.

I have amassed quite a bit of frick over the years and so felt it appropriate that I store it in a collection.
On a completely unrelated note, this is the entrance to a collection named after someone called Frick.

  Tuesday, May 29
  Happy with our museum-crashing the day before, we decided that it would be cool to learn about New York in general. So we took the standard tourist route and went on a boat tour of Manhattan! It was actually a really scenic and informative tour. We got tons of great photos and information, and the tour guide was really nice. Anyways, rather than realy information, I'll give you these photos instead. Because they are photos and thus worth how many words it is that photos are usually worth.

The new World Trade Center

Brooklyn Bridge hanging out and being a bridge. Surprisingly.

This is the Manhattan Bridge. Him and the Brooklyn Bridge like to get together for drinks every once in a while. They have trouble doing it though. Because they're bridges.

I don't know what that green lady is called.

The Empire State Building rejected me, so I'm going for a different target this time.

The Statue of Liberty has been greeting immigrants to the east coast of America for years and years. While it may appear that she is holding a slate of some sort, she is actually reading a book. Because she is a statue, she has been reading the same page of "The Hunger Games" since 1886. Because she is a statue, she just can't quite bring that torch close enough to burn that drivel.

    After that, we went off to watch a Broadway play titled "Venus in Fur". It's a psychological drama. Like your face. I really enjoyed it (unlike your face).

Lavish Broadway-style interior. Because it's Broadway.
    

  Wednesday, May 30

  Off to the Metropolitan Museum we go!

  I mean, one way to describe that place is "really, really, quite unreasonably huge". Another is "amazing". So amazingly huge it is that we probably only got through a third of a third of a third of it. My mom went on her own personal tour in there, while my dad and I tried to get around some of the permanent exhibitions there. But mainly we went for the temporary exhibitions: I had a feeling we'd be back at the Metropolitan some day. But, really, how do you want me to describe it? It's an absolutely wonderful amassment of human achievement. Hence, it is really really great.

The Temple of Dendur. What is the Temple of Dendur? See below.

Well that doesn't explain much. It is an ancient temple given to the U.S as a gift from Egypt because America donated money to help relocate priceless artifacts during the flooding that the Aswan Dam caused.

I loved this sculpture. Beautiful.
But, woman. You're a sculpture titled "Winter". I'm sure it'd be warmer if you put something on.

Ugolino, sentenced to starvation with his sons, resists their pleas to use their bodies for sustenance.

It's the Louvre. In the Metropolitan. In space.

Oh hey, Monet

  That evening, we went to another Broadway play! This time, it was a classic Broadway musical, "Nice Work", starring Matthew Broderick. It was an incredibly fun show, but it has to be admitted that Broderick was the least interesting actor in the entire cast. I feel that it's important to say that the rest of the cast were really great. And so was Broderick, but not nearly as great.
  That's not to say that Ferris Bueller isn't one of the coolest characters ever. They should make a musical based on the movie.
  No they shouldn't.

While the theatre billboards on the left may grab your attention, look to the centre and left of the photo.
A hazy, golden New York Sunset.

  Thursday, May 31
  It is an ancient tradition that medals may only be given to their new owners on Thursdays that fall on the 31 of the month. Because that is not a particularly common occurrence, medals gained a respectably high position on the list of things that should be given to people, right under "steel cup filled with delicious drink such as wine or ozonated water". It is believed that this tradition originated in Kenya and China simultaneously. "Simultaneously" because it is a well-known fact that Kenya and China were once one land mass. That is why zebras and pandas share a similar colour.
  Upholding this tradition was the official hey-guys-let's-award-800-or-so-teens-with-medals-efficiently day at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. That day, we took the subway for the first time to the Parsons New School of Design, whose multiple campuses (as far s I could tell) were scattered in and around Chelsea, a neighbourhood in Manhattan. The subway train had wood panelling coupled with white and orange paint. It screamed '70s like pandas scream ultra-low frequencies to communicate with the zebras in Africa.
  We got there, greeted by incredibly nice volunteers, and I got my beautiful, shiny medal. It came  with a blue backpack containing all the sexiness in the world, mainly a catalogue of award-winning artwork.

The name of every single 2012 award winner in the New York Times, you say?
Why yes, I am cool with that.

Glimmering in the New York morning

The New School

Discussing matters of grave importance with dad

  So then we subwayed back to the hotel to drop off the medal (can't be just swinging that thing around, you know), detoured to Times Square, and subwayed again, this time back to Chelsea. We decided to see two attractions in that part of town: Chelsea Market and the Highline.
  Chelsea Market is a former warehouse that's been converted, as the name implies, into a market. Delicious sea food, delicious Asian cuisine, delicious Italian food, delicious bookstores. The architecture combines brick arches, walls with steel fittings, and floors with lighted tiles.

My face and Times Square together in a photo

What you did there. I see it.

  

Welcome to New York, where Pepto Bismol flows like waterfalls.

It's pretty hard to find a place to eat.

Welcome to the future, where you can walk forever and ever.

  The Highline came as a solution in the first several decades of the twentieth century. A solution to freight trains running over and crushing people and cars on their way to the many warehouses in that part of town. The Highline's solution was to elevate the tracks above the roads - the result being a raised railway weaving through the urban landscape. But by the '30s, the track was made obsolete by transnational road shipping. The rails lay, slowly rotting for the next seventy years or so. Then, as the twenty-first century rolled in, the tracks were refurbished into an elevated walkway and greenspace, dubbed the Highline. It's really awesome.

Walking along the Highline

Step 1 to build a Utopia: glass, steel, and grass.

Life goes on below.

The old tracks lie intact

Photographer Richard Avedon won a Scholastic Art and Writing Award as a teen, just so you know.

And the sun goes down.

Castles

Bricks being bricks

Dissonance

Squeezed right in

There's water on the other side.
It's the Hudson River.

The Highline Zoo: Feo's Award for Best Use of Animal Cutouts

The Highline showing off its lushness.

Step 2 to building a Utopia: build modern birdhouses.
It'll help, trust me.

Hah. You can't impress me with your Highline shoobiedoobie.

The Highline, a place where you can read a book, relax, and - oh. Well, you can do what the lady in the middle is doing. Collapse, presumably?
Whatever floats your gears.

  We walked all the way home, and stopped by the Empire State Building, which was lit in gold that night in honour of the Art and Writing Awards.

Look at it go!

I'm just checking my Facebook.
IN THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Gold, like my silver medal.

  Friday, June 1st, Awards Night
  I spent most of the day in bed. Because we cool people sleep before going to Carnegie and all. This was the big day.
  In New York, if you're dressed normally, no one will bat an eyelash at you. On the street, people will walk at you, seeing who steps aside first as though it were a big game of pedestrian chicken. However, when you're dressed up (and not just in a black business suit. I mean actually dressed up) people glance up from their commuting stupor. They walk around you. It's great.
  Carnegie Hall is beautiful, and huge. I mean, the Winspear here is big - Carnegie is really big. Soft red velvet coats the chairs. The hall slowly fills to the brim, first with teens, then with parents, teachers, and whoever else. Not a single seat is left empty.
  The ceremony itself was brilliant, not too short, not too long. Award winning art was constantly projected on a huge screen hanging over the stage. Meryl Streep talked about the cultural significance of being an artist in a wonderful speech. All and all it was a really great event.
  As people leaving Carnegie clogged the surrounding streets, passers-by were confused (especially by the constant barrage of people asking them to take a photo). I took photos with, as far as anyone could tell, the only other Canadian there: a photographer from Toronto.
  An interesting thing to note is that while girls' outfits varied, almost all the guys looked the same: blue blazer, dress shirt, white pants. That's what I was wearing, except my bright-as-hell red sneakers set me apart. They always seem to. Can't say the white pants-blazer combo looks anything but good, though.
  Go to sleep.

I found myself in this photo.

Say something bad about Meryl Streep. I dare you. I double dare you.

Hey, I wonder where I'm celebrating? Who knows.

Post-Carnegie sushi at the French sushi place
Sushishop!

I tried doing something to the red eye in iPhoto. Never ever trying that again.
Red sneakers.

Is that a handwritten score by my favorite composer Rachmaninoff?
Yes, yes it is.

  Saturday, June 2nd

  After a good night's sleep, we subwayed back to Parsons to view the Student Showcase. I would post up all my photos of the amazing student artwork at the ART.WRITE.NOW exhibition, but I don't really know if that's actually allowed. Absolutely fantastic stuff, so check it out here! I read my award-winning piece, and listened to my fellow writers do the same. The film screenings were all incredibly interesting. The one complaint I have about that day is that not nearly enough time was given to just socialize and meet other people. But all the same, great day man.
  There were also readings of student work by TACT Theatre, which were absolutely mindblowing. They weren't really readings, they were full-fledged skits. The acting was brilliant. There was this one comedy monologue where the narrator about the size of her butt (which she thinks is too small), and a little Chinese boy in the back went ballistic. He was laughing nonstop for the next five minutes or so.

TACT readings

Handmaking buttons at Parsons!

  

I'm like a movie star at this point.

As the name implies.

Reading!

Scary-narrow pizza-pie

  Sunday, June 3rd
  Man, I love trains. They are easily the best form of transport the human race has ever created. But man was it ever painful to leave New York. But we did, and we rode the train for ten hours to Montreal, and slept the night there. Then we flew home.

Reflected in the trees.

The Hudson.

  And in the end, I had only one idea in my mind: I'm going back next year.

Feo.