L'histoire de sa vie

For the next two days I’ll be in the Finger Lakes region of New York touring vineyards. As a result, my “day off” will be Friday. And since I never post on Saturday, that means this is the fifth post for the week. Come back on Sunday!

So I write a lot of posts about doughnuts. There’s pretty much no question that I have an obsession. Of course, this is what happens when you grow up surrounded by the delicious tastes of Shipley Do-Nuts. As a result, and since I have strong opinions on pretty much everything, I have a strong opinion on New York doughnuts, which is this: they mostly suck.

I’ve railed against Dunkin Donuts and celebrated the Donut Pub, but the fact remains that there pretty much is no doughnut in New York even close to as good as Shipley. This was further proven by my trip Wednesday to the Doughnut Plant on the Lower East Side.

The doughnut plant has cute decorations, little ceramic donut-shapes in the windowsill, but that’s pretty much where the excitement (if you can call it that) stops. I tried two doughnuts, a “shamrock” doughnut (glazed with a random shamrock on it) and a “carrot cake” doughnut.

The reason for these choices is that I was on a food tour and that’s what was provided. Nonetheless, I was disappointed. The carrot cake doughnut was no good, but I didn’t expect it to be. The issue is the shamrock. A glazed doughnut should be the signature doughnut of a doughnut shop. It should be the best they offer, because it’s the most fundamental and likely the most ordered. When I go to Shipley, I always get some ridiculous doughnut, in addition to at least one regular glazed doughnut.

This glazed doughnut, however, was not so great. It was okay and perhaps if it were melting hot it would be even better, but as it was, I’m still on the quest to find good doughnuts in New York City.

Last night, I saw A Behanding in Spokane on Broadway, starring Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell (from The Green Mile, among others). First of all, the show was hilarious and quite awesome. Second of all, Christopher Walken is awesome.

Seriously, the guy cracks me up. When I drove to Chippewa Falls last summer, I had no choice but to recall his scene in Annie Hall, and on a semi-weekly basis his performance in Pulp Fiction is discussed.

But in both of those cases, Walken is a minor character with only a little screen time. His interesting voice and personality is only presented for a short time. But in Behanding, we got a full ninety minutes complete with Walken, tons of time listening to him be ridiculously awesome with his seriously amazing voice.

If you have a chance to see the show before it ends and before Walken leaves the cast, see it. You will not be disappointed.

So a bunch of magazines, including Time Out NY, suggest that the best burger in New York is that of Shake Shack. Now, since the same issue also suggested that Do the Right Thing was the “quintessential New York movie,” and since I didn’t think it was that great, I had my doubts.

Nonetheless, I finally made it to Shake Shack yesterday. Their shakes were good but a little too sweet for my taste. The burger, however, was a different story. Simply put, it was delicious.

I mean, a burger is a burger, but this was in fact a really good burger. Every part of it was about as close to perfection as one could expect. My high expectations were met, something that so rarely happens.

I’ll probably go back soon. Because even though it’s forty blocks away from here, it’s delicious and therefore worth the trip.

During the last Woot-off I managed to score a sick shirt as well as my first “Bag of Crap.” For eight dollars, I got a box full of a bunch of odds and ends. Some are cool, some are useless, some are just ridiculous. Anyway, since it was only eight bucks, I cannot possibly complain. Here’s what I got, with pictures below.

• 2 “Camp Rock” Twin Bell Alarm Clocks (which I will mod by replacing the faces)
• A 4GB SanDisk Sansa e260 MP3 player (which I’m giving to my mother who has a need for such a device)
• A Brother Label Maker (with which I have no idea what I’ll do)
• A Picnic basket that unzips into a picnic mat (which I will use in Central Park in the near future, once it’s officially warm enough)
• A “Flush Light” light-up flusher for a toilet (??)

 

Every year I try to see the Oscar-Nominated Animated Short Films. It has been my experience that they tend to be amazing pieces with phenomenal animation, a great story, and they’re over before you have a chance to get bored. Last night, I went with a bunch of friends to the IFC to see this year’s slate.

We saw eight animated films in total, including a few that were “highly acclaimed” though not nominees. My favorite was The Lady and the Reaper, a Spanish film that was unbelievably funny. [Try this link.] In addition, French Roast, A Matter of Loaf and Death (the latest Wallace & Gromit Film), and Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty were all excellent as well.

There was one film that was overly dreary, and of course it came from Poland (not much of a shocker then that it included a caricature of a Jew as one of the characters). Other than that, the films were all pretty awesome.

Of course, nothing will come close to the awesomeness of The Danish Poet. I have still yet to see an animated short as good as that gem.

Yesterday was the first class of my free Mixology course. The class is divided into two parts: one hour of teaching and one hour of mixing/drinking. The hour of teaching was all about safety and being a good bartender, and the hour of mixing was about Highballs, aka colorful drinks with not so much alcohol content.

Easily the most important thing I learned was how to pour properly. Using this skill, I made a Rum & Coke (the least colorful drink on the list), a Pearl Harbor (Vodka, Melon Liqueur, and Pineapple Juice), and a Scarlet O’Hara (SoCo and Cranberry Juice). Neither of the last two drinks were very good, but I suppose people order that kind of junk.

Here’s what I’ll say about the course: It’s a lot of fun and very laid back, but had I actually paid two hundred dollars to be in it, I’d probably be upset. The relaxed nature is nice, but had I put good money in, I wouldn’t want that relaxed nature.

One woman seemed to feel the same way. In the question and answers section, she very bluntly asked the people in charge, “what qualifies you to teach this class?” She tried to laugh it off when it was obvious that she was being rude, but nonetheless, the question was out.

The entire Columbia Bartending Agency is student-run, so while they were in fact students, they had gone through the same class and had since tended bar all over the US (and in England), and actually were qualified enough to make the woman look like a fool.

Anyway, I have four more classes, in which I’ll learn all kinds of other things regarding all kinds of other drinks, hopefully some a little more my taste than a Sloe Comfortable Screw (Sloe Gin, SoCo, Vodka, OJ). Evviva!

So technically I still have two outstanding classes which I have yet to attend (Databases is a seminar on Mondays only and the other is explained below) but I’ve attended the bulk of my classes in two days so I figured I’d provide a prediction-rundown similar to last semester.

God, Torah, Israel – The professor seems good; she’s German. The workload seems normal. The class is FULL though, with way too many people, many of whom, if they open their mouth (a risk since it’s a philosophy class) will lead only to annoyance.

Operating Systems – This will be the hardest class I ever take. Unquestionably. But on the other hand it looks like it will be pretty awesome so hopefully I won’t be consumed with the intensity of the course.

Galaxies and Cosmology – The professor is Dutch and wants us to call him by his first name. Also I learned that ‘galaxy’ is Greek for “Milky Way.” So that’s awesome. I think I’m gonna have a fun time in this class.

Advanced Talmud – Another Talmud class with Professor Milgram, so obviously I’m thrilled. The workload is gonna be much more than last semester, which is good as it will separate the wheat from the chaff.

Men & Women in American Jewish Culture – So I won’t actually be taking this class. I attended the first class though, and here’s my thoughts: the readings and content look awesome. Unfortunately, the workload is absolutely ridiculous for and we’re expected to show up during Spring Break.

The Dean of the undergraduate school expects us to show up during Spring Break because it’s a “graduate class.” All this for what basically serves as an elective for me (it fulfills a history requirement for JTS. I can/will fulfill this with one of many other classes in the future.)

No thank you. So I replaced it with Special Topics in Computer Science, which I’ll experience for the first time later today, though in communications with the professor seems like it will be infinitely better and which counts toward my Columbia major.

Saturday night, John and I went to the River Oaks Theatre to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show, something we’ve done countless times before. RHPS is always a fun activity, and there’s nothing quite like yelling at a movie with everyone else in the theatre while toilet paper, cards, rice (though not allowed at River Oaks), and other things are thrown around on cue.

I particularly enjoy the Houston RHPS showings because of the number of people who are into the movie, shouting and throwing and generally acting crazy. On the other hand, I’ve been to the New York RHPS numerous times, and each time I’ve been disappointed with the very small number of people who take full advantage of the experience.

Sure, I don’t know every line to yell out, and sometimes I’m bothered when some people’s shouts go on for too long or are too obnoxious, but the experience is much better when it’s overdone than when it’s not done at all. Maybe the issue is that in NYC, there tend to be too many “virgins” (neophytes, in RHPS slang) whereas the crowd at River Oaks is more diverse, with quite a few regulars.

It’s odd because NYC is where the RHPS craze began, yet in my opinion it is done better elsewhere. Finally, I’ve heard of a number of schools hosting RHPS showings, yet no such thing exists at Columbia. It’s too bad, because that would be truly awesome.

On Friday, my family took a trip up to Shiner, Texas, to visit the Spoetzl Brewery, home of Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock, as you may know, will always hold a special place in my heart as my favorite beer. Thus it was a real treat to head up to the little brewery where it all began.

The brewery tour was typical, similar to so many other brewery tours. We saw the (all-copper) lauter tuns and the hoppers and the fermenters. We saw some neat memorabilia including a wooden chair that a previous owner of the brewery had carved from one piece of wood.

Most importantly we got free beer. Among these brews was their latest concoction, Shiner Fröst, a hoppy yet light-colored creation. In addition, I had some Hefeweizen and of course some Bock straight from the source. Delicious.

At this point I’ve come to expect very little in the way of actual touring from brewery tours. I enjoy them immensely (largely because of the beer I get, hence the reason I’ve now been to the Saint Arnold Brewery three times), but ultimately there’s not that much to see at a brewery.

We also stopped in Gonzales, home of the cannon that fired the first shot of the Texas Revolution, and the “Come and Take It” flag that has become synonymous with 1836. There we learned a story of how Texas almost became French.

The trip was a lot of fun, and it was nice to finally make the pilgrimage to Shiner. The beer flowed and may it continue to do so indefinitely. Evviva!

So I upgraded, as the title of this post suggests, to Windows 7 over the past couple days. The process was marvelously simple, especially considering that I had to do a “custom install” as I was going from Vista Ultimate 32-bit to 7 Enterprise 64-bit. I popped in the disc, rebooted, and a couple hours later, everything was running. After transferring my files from the “Windows.old” folder, everything was up and running. Here’s my thoughts of the new operating system:

• Fast. Everything just seems snappier. It could be because I’m now running a 64-bit native system and it can actually address all of my 4 GB of RAM (in fact, this is exactly the reason), but nonetheless everything is faster.
• There’s a lot of eye candy, which doesn’t do much for me, but some of it is actually functional. Aero Peek, for example, is really nice, as is the fact that the Start menu’s application icons allow you to see recent documents created in those applications.
• The “dock-like” behavior of the taskbar is wonderful. Major improvement. Sure, this is blatantly ripped off from OS X, but it’s quite tastefully done and solves one major problem I always had in Vista: applications staying in the same order on the taskbar.
• Apparently there’s better speech recognition. I haven’t had a chance to play around with it, but it’s next on my list.
• There’s a lot of protection. When I tried to install a driver that was incompatible, Windows alerted me to this fact and sent me to a website with the newer version. Wow.

Overall I’m very impressed. Microsoft clearly did a good job with Windows 7. I was actually a fan of Vista because from an IT standpoint it solves a lot of problems that XP had, but Windows 7 is above and beyond better than Vista ever wanted to be. I’m glad I made the upgrade.