Monthly Archives: November 2013

The Cloisters

Over the summer, my wonderful significant other Michele and I visited the Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan. The location itself is absolutely marvelous; the walk up to the museum is through a completely green park that gives off a “forestlike” feeling. There’s a rocky walkway with arches and benches that overlooks both the river and the rest of the city.

Cloisters is definitely one of New York City’s best kept secrets. It’s a small “museum” that focuses on architecture and art from mainly medieval Europe (which is ironic, because the walls inside the museum all have outlets for hipsters to charge their iPads before taking pictures). I think the architecture was my favorite part; the villas and the rooftops as well as the pillars pictured below all stuck out to me more than anything else.

Cloysters!

The weirdest part about the museum, I’d say, is its hardcore focus on paintings and murals of unicorns. Why on earth would people obsess over unicorns, you ask? Great question, I don’t know either. Might have something to do with imagination and a passionate yearning for discovering the unknown, but that’s just my opinion.

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Fun Home

Late “Fun Home” review!

For the first time in my 18 years of life, I attended an off broadway play. Shameful, I know, but you always remember your first and I definitely will for this one.

‘Fun Home’, a new musical directed by Sam Gold and composed by four-time Tony Award-nominated composer Jeanine Tesori, was a triple threat. It weaved the genres of tragedy, comedy, and musical into a successful source of entertainment but also great insight on social and familial problems.

The opening scene of ‘Fun Home’ was a powerful one as it gloriously displayed the Bechdel’s hectic and distressed home with the meticulous Bruce Bechdel, played by Michael Cerveris, at the forefront. Mr. Cerveris played the character of Bruce with great ferocity. Even through the stability of home improvement and funeral work, Bruce’s life was uncomfortable and unfulfilling and it showed through the performance of Mr. Cerveris. Though I had imagined Bruce as a much more distant and colder character from the novel, Cerveris’ portrayal convinced me of an equally dissatisfied Bruce.

One might’ve thought that the frequent transitions between young, middle, and older Alison would’ve been confusing but I felt that these added to the story and its themes. It showed how Alison’s father, regardless of how neglectful or unrelatable he was to her, shaped her own life, every step of the way. Sydney Lucas, playing young Alison, was simply vivacious and stunning in her performances. Her scenes were the most compelling and invigorating. Alexandra Socha also played college Alison in a great and unique way. From the book, I understood that college Alison was an awkward character but when Ms. Socha portrayed her on stage, it was awkward in an awesome and empathetic way.  The rotating set was surprise to me and at the beginning, I was afraid that I would be distracted by the other sets on the stage. However, each scene utilized the setting very well. From the hilarious commercial filming scene in the funeral home to the tense scenes in the study, every performance brought its best so it was easy to disregard the extra sets in the foreground.

I do believe, of course, the tragicomic is a lot more in depth but the play provides a good support and complement. The musical pieces flow extremely well with the scenes and don’t seem to come of nowhere. The pieces often stole lines from the tragicomic and made them catchy and relatable. The story in the play was obviously cut down from the tragicomic but the weirdest thing was that whereas the play actually made me laugh at times, the book did not at all. Personally, I thought the book offered too much information in one frame but the play offered just the right amount to keep me interested. They kept the powerful scenes of the book (although I do wish they included more self revelation scenes of Alison’s sexuality during the college years) and brought them to life.

Overall, for my first off Broadway play, I’m glad that ‘Fun Home’ was the one.

 

 

 

 

Union Square: Public Art

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While walking around Union Square on Halloween, I took newfound notice at the huge artwork plastered on a building. I never paid it much attention, but perhaps the (what I think looks like a) wand and the smoke on Halloween gave the day a more magical appearance, so I watched it for a bit, pondering its significance.

The piece done by artists Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel and is called Metronome. They describe the piece to be “an investigation into the nature of time,” which incorporates a variety of symbolic aspects.

The digital clock is called “the Passage”, the five-foot-wide circle is called “the Infinity”, the hand is called “the Relic”, the gold overlay is called “the Source”, the brick wall is called “the Vortex”, the rock is called “the Matter”, the lunar time piece on the far left is called “the Phases”, and the needle is called “the Focus”. It’s clear to say that there’s a lot of symbolic meaning to this piece, much of which revolve around energy, time, earth and God. “The Vortex” stands for a metaphor of the rotation of the earth and the passing of time, “the Matter” is suggestive of geological times when Manhattan was simply made of bedrock, and “the Infinity”, which strikes a tone at noon and midnight, shows the importance of time.

“Ultimately, the work is an ode to mortality and the impossibility of knowing time,” which is supposed to contrast the digital clock on the right. To read the digital clock, look at the seven leftmost digits, which show time in a conventional 24-hour format, going left to right showing hours, minutes, seconds and tenths of a second. The seven rightmost digits display the time remaining in a 24-hour day counting backwards, once again, left to right, to show the tenths of a second, seconds, minutes and hours left in the day.

I don’t know why I never cared for the piece or gave it much notice, perhaps because I find it rather drab, and its symbolic meaning certainly won’t jump out at you, it’s a piece one would seriously have to ponder. Similar to my reaction, yet perhaps a bit more harsh, critics alike have generally found the Metronome to be a waste of space, dubbing it a pretentious “wailing wail…where the death of aesthetics can be contemplated.”

Little Fun Fact: Metronome cost $3 million to produce

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Muscle Car

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I saw this on may way home from school, and I just had to snap a picture. I’m not really sure what’s going on here, but this is a stretch limo that seems to have had some muscle added on. I’m not sure why anyone would have done this, but it looks really cool. I guess the ladder on top (which might not be so visible in the picture) makes me think it might be for a practical reason, like the old Elliot Ness Untouchables truck, but why would anyone do that? Is the owner some kind of vigilante superhero? Or are they just some kind of weird macho kind of thing? Either way it looks really cool.

Images of Glory

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This picture really says it all. The elation of being the absolute best, the team that no one could stop. The pure joy of being a world champ. The truth is that we shouldn’t be surprised to see the Red Sox as World Series champs. Since day one of the Baseball season, the Red Sox have been the best overall team in baseball. They haven’t been a team of superstars, but they have been a team with superb stories.

Whether its been Koji Uehara, the 38 year old reliever who  rose from the ashes of the Red Sox bullpen to have one of the most dominant stretches a reliever ever has; or David Ortiz, coming back from a few down years and offseason surgery to lead the team in home runs, RBIs and batting average; and who can forget Game 6 hero Shane Victorino, who did everything he possibly could, including getting hit more than any other player in the league to help his team win.

All of these were just part of the biggest story of all: how a team can execute a complete turnaround from last in the AL East to by far the best team in the game, and without any of the big names that they had when they struggled. GO SOX!

(sorry its late)