Art: Video Games and Music Videos

When I was in Washington, DC, recently, I went to one of my favorite places - the National Portrait Gallery. It shares space with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which was having an exhibit on Video Games. I had to go and see it.

According the the exhibit information, video games really reflect art in many different mediums - visual, story telling, musically, etc. So this exhibit explores "the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies."

For me it was a walk down memory lane. I remember my cousins who had Ataris or Intellivision or the first Nintendo. I had the Commodore 64 (and I'm pretty sure it's in the basement of my parent's house somewhere) , but I didn't use it for video games. My Dad got it for me in the hopes that I'd become some computer programmer-type. He had good vision, too bad he was stuck with a non-techie daughter!

What made this exhibit truly enjoyable was that they had stations in the beginning where you could play the games -- from Pac-Man and Super Mario Brothers to Myst and some game I'd never heard of called Flower. I played Pac-Man and managed to get all the dots! Some skills apparently never go away.

Here are some pics from the early years of the video game art.




Created with flickr slideshow.
In another art related, memory lane exhibit, when I was in Cincinnati I visited the Contemporary Art Museum. I went in an hour before it was going to close so the guy at the front desk let me in for free. They had an exhibit titled "Spectacle: The Music Video," which was all about the art of music videos.

It was great. They had a lot of music videos you could watch, such as A-Ha's "Take On Me" to Queens' Bohemian Rhapsody.

I actually spent time at a lot of exhibits watching videos, remembering back to when MTV actually played music videos.

The exhibit explained how it was created, why it was different or cutting edge at the time.  It also showed some controversial videos which represented pushing boundaries. And in a more recent art phenomenon, talked about how videos can go viral with other people doing their interpretation of songs or videos, like all the different videos of Beyonce's  "All the Single Ladies."

It was pretty awesome!

An (Unexpected) Day Off

I need to burn some personal days before the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of June. It was pretty eventful, if I do say so myself. I started the day with a movie. It was a bad movie that I do not recommend, but matinees (or movie before noon) are actually affordable in NYC. (Translation: It's under $10!)

Then I headed to Queens to do some exploring in Astoria. I walked around. It was nice, definitely more diverse crowd there. I went to a grilled cheese place called The Queens Kickshaw. Apparently, it started off as a coffee shop, but the owners decided to serve food - hence grilled cheeses - and do craft beer. It was actually a really nice space. I sat at the counter by the cook/chef as he made the grilled cheese. (Another plus to sitting there was that it was warm.) The downside to sitting there was that everything looked good. I had a hard time deciding what grilled cheese to get. (And for a second, I thought about skipping the grilled cheese and going with their stuffing option. Yep, as a main they offer stuffing!

Blueberry Vinegar Cordial

I didn't go for the craft beer though, I tried a vinegar cordial instead. They do a lot of their own pickling, and they add some of the liquid (in my case, the blueberry pickling juice) to seltzer water.

It gives it a nice tart, blueberry flavor. I thought it went nicely with the Gruyere grilled cheese I (eventually) decided on. While I'm not a rye fan, I thought I'd give it a go. I liked the idea of the use of mustard with the grilled cheese. I guess I should explain. The Gruyere grilled cheese was on rye bread with whole grain mustard and caramelized onion and came with a side of cabbage slaw. It was tasty and all the flavors went well together. But sometimes I just crave the grilled cheese from when I was young. American cheese on white bread. The gruyere was not that -- it was definitely a more sophisticated, upscale grilled cheese. It was worth the trek out to Queens. And I'd go back again. Kickshaw is open late! (Given my work hours, that's a plus!)

Gruyere Grilled Cheese

After my wanderings in Astoria I headed back to Manhattan. I was craving some dessert so I went to Columbus Circle with the thought of going to Bouchon Bakery, but instead I walked north to Levain Bakery and got one of their warm chocolate peanut butter cookies.  Then I headed home through Central Park.

Earlier in the week, I had seen the line for Shakespeare in the Park tickets and thought I'd swing by the box office to see if there were any tickets left for the night's performance -- there were! So I got one.

I've always wanted to go to a Shakespeare in the Park performance. Forget the fact that it's free and it has some great actors performing, it's a play outdoors! The show I saw was As You Like It and some of the actors that were in it included Andre Braugher and Oliver Platt. It was a good performance. I liked the set and the chorus was musical. But I kind of wish it had been a bit more cutting edge. Maybe it was from all the Shakespeare Theatre Co. performances I saw, but I tend to like productions that had a different twist to them. This production seemed like the hill-billy version. Still, I'm glad I went and it was a good way to spend an evening.

My $8 champagne.

Oh, and the other plus? When you order a drink (which you can take into the theatre), they really top it up!

All in all it was a great day to spend an unexpected day off. I have another day off that won't be that action packed, I'm sure. But hopefully, it won't take me two weeks to write about.

36 Hours in San Francisco

I went to the Bay Area for Memorial Day weekend -- T was having a baby shower in Napa and I got to visit with my cousins. All worth flying cross-country for, in my opinion. Flying out, one of my co-workers CH was on the same flight as me. It was one of those small world moments.

Anyway, if there was a theme to this trip, it was revisiting old haunts.

I took BART to the Mission. I hadn't been to the neighborhood since I lived in San Francisco in 2001. I grabbed lunch at a small, inexpensive, and yummy taco place.

But mainly I walked around to see how the neighborhood had changed, and how it hadn't.  It was amazing how different it was -- the stores, restaurants -- but the sense of the neighborhood still remained. I stopped by bi-rite creamery and got a scoop of brown sugar ice cream with caramel ginger swirl that was amazing. I don't know if this was around in 2001, but if I had known about it, I would have been there every day!

Then I walked to Hayes Valley. Again, a neighborhood that had changed a lot since I was last there -- a lot of nice cute shops and places to eat. I stopped by Smitten ice cream and picked up a scoop of chocolate. 

This place is well known because it uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the ice cream -- it makes it a lot smoother. It's also fun to watch the "smoke" come out of the container. I went back and tried their strawberry with pink peppercorn. All in all I loved the flavor profiles at Bi-Rite, but I liked the texture of Smitten.

From there I walked to Alamo Square and saw the "painted ladies." The houses looked like I remembered, but I had totally forgotten how hilly the park actually is and all the trees -- the big, redwood type trees in the park. I was also close to my old neighborhood, so I walked to the Upper panhandle and saw the old place on Fulton St.

When I lived there, they had just begun to break ground on a shopping complex next door. I remember the construction would wake me up at 7:30am. It was good to see the finished complex.

I met up with my cousins and went to dinner to this cute little restaurant called Chez Maman.  It was this small place that seated like 14 people -- only 2 tables, the rest was counter space. We had spaces right in front of the stove, so it was like dinner theatre -- watching the cook prepare the different dishes.

I cannot say enough about how good my meal was. I want to go back and try about 5 other things on the menu -- in one sitting!

I got a french cider, mussels (les mouels poulette: shallots, bacon, white wine, cream & parsley), and frites. YUM!

The next day I was off to Napa -- the baby shower was at a spa there. It was great. I hadn't been to the Napa area in awhile. It was nice to drive past all the vineyards. I got back and then headed back to NYC. On the plus side, I got upgraded to business class on the flight, but I fell asleep before take off, so I really didn't get to enjoy any of the "perks" of business class.

CSA

I signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) veggie box through work. I went with the bi-weekly delivery and got my first bag Thursday.  It was a lot of greens -- basil, kale, lettuce, cilantro, arugula, garlic scapes -- and the veg included radishes, turnips, zucchini, and yellow squash. It was a lot  of veg. So I spent this week cooking. I made an arugula and bacon bread pudding. It was actually good. Should be lunch for a couple of days this week.

This morning I made pesto: basil, some cilantro, almonds (I had almonds, not pinenuts), Parmesan, garlic and lots of olive oil.

It went well with my pasta lunch. I figure it will also be a good spread for a grilled zucchini and squash sandwich I'll be making at the end of the week!

The Cloud

Recently, as I've run past the MET I've noticed the roof deck and this space-age sculpture on the roof. Today, I finally got to the roof deck to check out Tomas Saraceno's Cloud City.

You have to get a ticket with a timed entry to actually go inside it. As you can see, it's these clear, sometimes reflective modules. I went wearing a skirt -- probably not the best idea because as the instructions note, some places are clear and can be seen from below. Oh well. 

It really was quite interesting. There are some areas where only two people are allowed at a time. Apparently, there are also different levels of firmness in the structure, something I worried about because some floors creaked more than others. It was exhilarating, though, to see the wires -- the spiderwebs -- that echoed the interconnectivity of the structure.

You're not allowed to bring a bag or any personal belongings into the structure, and you have to duck in certain places to get into the modules. It was a sunny day so I kept my sunglasses on. It was a good call, because it really could reflect a lot of light.

All in all, it was worth the visit. Even if you don't get to go in, it's worth going to the deck. You can peer up into it (and enjoy a drink and the views of the park and the city).
Here's a video of the structure being put up.